RE: Schemas Article

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Of those, the one I take to be most 
persuasive is namespace awareness. 
On the other hand, given that is directly 
tieing systemic definitions into the 
information (mixing medium and message) 
it may introduce a pathogen into the 
information itself.  Time will tell. 

Yes.  Optimizing for programmers over 
users is usually a big mistake.  It is 
guaranteed to create features explosion.

Modularity should be the next step. 
Oddly, I am seeing people who are not 
part of the XML-Dev community and not 
programmers in general use examples 
and come up to speed on basic Schema 
design very quickly.  So now that 
we have it, I expect it to proliferate. 
Like SGML, people sort out the features 
they need and use them.  Some complain 
where those don't meet requirements and 
then there will be a natural fracture. 
I am someone who thinks it a mistake 
to mix schema and OOP design but that 
is just an opinion.   The more we 
hide properties, the less powerful 
markup is for what it does best: 
ensure long lifecycle traits.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Dylan Walsh [mailto:Dylan.Walsh@Kadius.Com]
> 
>If all TREX does is validate, how will that be 
>any better than a DTD?

1. Namespace aware
2. XML syntax
3. AND in content model (from reading the interview)

I've been slightly perplexed by all the negative comments on XML Schema,
but I've found James Clarks interview
(http://www.ddj.com/articles/2001/0107/0107e/0107e.htm) to be the most
persuasive. He makes a strong case for seperating these parts:
1. making changes to the infoset (general entities in DTDs, PSVI in XML
Schema)
2. markup validation
3. advanced features like OO structures, relational constraints and
datatyping. In particular this is an area where you can't please all of
the people, all of the time.

Perhaps XML Schema 1.1 should modularize the standard in the same way
that XHTML 1.1 does. That said, I suspect that a lot of the negative
reactions are coming from people who have to implement it. For every
programmer who uses XML, what percentage have written a parser? It is a
very small proportion, and I think it will go down better with the
developer community at large than it has with the core people developing
the tools.


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