RE: XML Schema becomes a W3C Recommendation

["Anderson, John" <John@Barbadosoft.com>]

Title:

 

Seeing the various posts about the XML Schema Recommendation being released and (partial)  implementations, we thought you might like to see a preliminary version of a Repository-based implementation (with a GUI front-end). It is not fully complete but we feel we have gained a good insight into some of the 'challenges' raised by the Rec. and would be happy to share our experiences and expertise.

 

We are working towards a platform for developing complex XML applications which takes away much of the pain of implementing XSD (or any other schema syntax) and manages the relationships between your XML definitions and the processes which depend upon them. We feel that this will help encourage acceptance and widespread use of XML and XSD by putting them into the hands of the less geeky.

 

We have just frozen a beta version of the first application built on this platform, Barbados Modeler, which offers object-oriented (as opposed to file-oriented) development of schemas (with a small "s"), impact analysis and a mechanism for managing multiple live versions. This will be released as a commercial product shortly with full compliance, in the meantime it is available for use to anyone who would like to test it, break it and and generally let us know what is good and what is bad about it.

 

If anyone is interested in being involved in our beta program, please contact us at:

info@barbadosoft.com

with the following information:

 

Name:

Company:

Email:

Address:

Tel:

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com [mailto:Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com]
Sent: 03 May 2001 16:08
To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: XML Schema becomes a W3C Recommendation

The question in my mind is "will the industry REALLY accept it as a Standard?" I have no idea ... We as a community need to figure out:

- Can the spec can be implemented by those not closely involved in its creation? (for example, there are significant bits in the first incarnation of XML 1.0 that assumed a knowledge of SGML; will the ability to implement the XSD spec depend on shared knowledge that it not written down in the spec itself?)

- Are implementations interoperable in practice?  We need something like the OASIS XML test suite, and someone to do for XSD what David Brownell did for XML to rigorously analyze the degree to which different implementations of the spec yield the same results from the same inputs.

- Where is the "sweet spot" for ordinary users?  In other words, what is the "Common XSD" subset that ordinary users can easily understand AND all the implementations handle properly?

- What's the real business case for selling XSD to non-geeks?   XSD MAY add more value to real business systems than it costs. There is a theoretical case to be made for why a declarative constraint specification language such as XSD is "better" than procedural code that validates business rules ... but can we REALLY use XSD to build practical examples that prove it?

- If XSD can't meet some or all of these criteria, can TREX and/or RELAX do a better job?  And if they do, will the CTO's of the world care?