Re: ZDNet Schema article,and hiding complexity within user-friendlyproducts

[Eric van der Vlist <vdv@dyomedea.com>]

Michael Champion wrote:

.../... 
> Anyone want to pick up the thread ... is something like W3C XML Schema a
> "good thing" after all if it can be wrapped up in user-friendly tools? Or is
> its "power" (aka "complexity") too great to fully encapsulate inside a
> friendly interface?

I don't think that the success or failure of W3C XML Schema will come
from its technical qualities or defects, but like it is the case with
hardware or software products, from its marketing.

Good thing or bad thing, W3C XML Schema is likely to succeed whatever
you put under the cover!

Marketed as "XML Schema", it is already in most of the people mind
(except maybe on this list), THE schema language to use for XML, just
because it is proposed by the W3C, the same organization that has
published XML.

Most of the people tend to prefer buying all their technologies from the
same supplier to avoid the nightmare of integrating products from
different vendors and will "buy" W3C XML Schema with XML for the same
reason they've been using SQL*Forms, Visual Basic or DB2 on
mainframes...

This is a huge responsibility for the Schema Working Group since it
means that the defects of W3C XML Schema will be perceived by most as
defects of XML.

I think there are still 2 useful tasks that can be done by independent
developers, though.

One is to develop other schema languages that we can used for our own
purpose and that may inspire future releases of W3C XML Schema but won't
probably get a significant "market share" compared to W3C XML Schema.

The other is to try to find the best ways to use W3C XML Schema with its
defects.

That being said, it's not its power that frighten me but its rigidity
and the fact that it cannot describe all the flavors of XML.

Eric
-- 
See you in Hong Kong for www10:
                     http://www.www10.org/program/w10-half-tut.shtml#ta5
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Eric van der Vlist       Dyomedea                    http://dyomedea.com
http://xmlfr.org         http://4xt.org           http://examplotron.org
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