Re: appinfo considered harmful. Re: What is the advantage ofRELAXincomparison to Schemas?

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

David E. Cleary wrote:

>
> But that is just one of the many uses for appInfo. It can be used for many
> other things than just extra validation checking.
>
> >     One of the reasons to have common specifications is to enable (not
> > provide) interoperability. One of the major factors against
> > interoperability
> > is the use of custom slots/tags/whatever such as appinfo.
>
> Again, nothing in appInfo stops you from schema validating an instance or
> using its PSVI.

Perhaps you are saying that the sole purpose of an XML Schema is to validate
an instance or create a PSVI? In this case why corrupt a perfectly good
schema with something completely outside its purpose?

On the other hand, perhaps you are saying that the purpose of a schema is
more than validation and/or creation of a PSVI? In this case then why not
document how this is to be accomplished, rather than create a random tag
with random contents?

Either way I think its a bad practice. I'm not sure I would totally ban
appinfo, just as I'm not totally sure I would totally ban ownership of a
shotgun. On the other hand neither would I encourage someone to blow his or
her brains out with a shotgun.

>
> >     I'm not against modularization, its just that appinfo doesn't
> > provide a
> > standard mechanism to create and document such modules.
>
> That is where the Schema Adjunct Framework comes in. Although it mostly
> refers to a separate XML document, it will be mapped to appInfo structures
> too. See http://www.extensibility.com/saf.

The SAF looks fine. The problem isn't that it will be mapped to appinfo, the
problem is that anything can be put into appinfo.

-Jonathan