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

[Michael Champion <mike.champion@softwareag-usa.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric van der Vlist [mailto:vdv@dyomedea.com]
> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 5:50 PM
> To: xml-dev
> Subject: Re: ZDNet Schema article, and hiding complexity within
> user-friendlyproducts
>
>
>
> 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.

Fair enough.  Nevertheless, hardly anyone has actually USED the
beast yet except for the kinds of people on this list.  At the risk
of violating the dreaded W3C Omerta oath ... looking at the official
"votes" on Schema, I don't see a lot of evidence that most W3C members
took a terribly close look at it and weighed the costs and benefits;
they figure that the world needs a Schema spec, so they ASSUME that what
the Working Group came up with is a Good Thing.

What will happen when the interoperability problems hits the fan?
[SOAP is *much* simpler, and it is still struggling with interoperability.]
Will everyone say "it's  Microsoft/Oracle/IBM's problem,
we trust them to solve it" and "we can't think about TREX/RELAX
because it's not THE schema spec?  Maybe so, but I wouldn't take the bet.

I remember when OS/2 came out ... all the pundits and polls concluded that
it
would be widely adopted "real soon now." Then people started trying to get
real programs working with it, found that it was
a lot easier to express interest than to ship products (Lotus 123?  Word
Perfect?).
[Let's not get into IBM's alleged incompetence or MS's possible duplicity
here
... I'm just trying to illustrate the gap between
what people SAID they would do based on ASSUMPTIONS about a technology and
what they DID do once they saw it on their machines.]

This may be stretching the point, but I'm also reminded of all the punditry
about the emerging trend toward "social interfaces" in 1995 when
Microsoft was developing "Bob." Then the thing itself came out ...
and was quickly laughed off the market ...along with the concept of
"social interfaces."  SO, I'm reserving judgment until
we see what the market REALLY says about W3C Schema as a useful and
interoperable
technology.