MSXML Features (WAS RE: Steve Ballmer is cracking up)

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

From: Joshua Allen [mailto:joshuaa@microsoft.com]

>> is the functionality of MSXML 4.n because
>> the food chain starts there.  True for me,
>> and probably a few gazillion others.  Like

>I would also add that I think the conformance of *all* vendors' products
>on past XML standards like XSLT and XML DOM would have been much worse
>without the input of people who discover spec conformance bugs being
>persistent about getting that feedback through.  Vendors sometimes
>attach more weight to customer complaints than to their own testers.

The Golden Rule:  the gold rules.  But that is SOP.  Sometimes it goes 
to who yells loudest but most of the time it goes to who yells loudest 
while waving a large denomination bill (at least at my gigs...).

>And another comment for people using the MS platform; the .NET Framework
>SDK which just released Beta 2 for download on MSDN, should eventually
>(sooner rather than later) replace MSXML as the start of the food chain.

I suspect for the ToTheAtoms programmers, yes, but I wonder about the 
scriptKiddies such as myself who don't need all that firepower particularly 
while we are learning to write valid and provably correct schemas.  Today 
and for a few months, we are modeling and testing.  Having A VERY EASY TO 
CALL AND GET BACK A SIMPLE ANSWER box like MSXML helps.  It is hard enough 
to find the missing features in the box; in a warehouse, it takes a 
village ("you are number six...").

>This is not to say that MSXML is dead; it is just to say that
>the System.Xml classes will be an increasingly large part of the
>foodchain as time goes on.

Right.  Today we need to know how many of the features of XML Schemas (2001)

MSXML supports so we can tell the difference between our lack of skill 
and MSXML's non-support.  As usual, the documented examples and the 
code are at odds.  <unique> is the one that popped to the top last week. 
Could just be me but I couldn't make the example in the SDK help  
work either.

Anyway, not trying to debug here, just saying, if this week's special 
is MSXML 4.0, we can share some queries here and move along the progress 
of XML Schema expertise.  People are writing schemas, creating courseware, 
books, all the usual tasks.  Yes we can go use XSV but that means figuring 
out what it supports too.  Any of these are the same.  As an MSThrall, I 
can only worry about one box at a time.

Then system.Xml classes.

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

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