Re: XPath conformance? was RE: [xml-dev] storing XML files

[Tom Bradford <bradford@dbxmlgroup.com>]

Evan Lenz wrote:
> But let's be clear. The subject line of this thread is "XPath conformance".
> There's nothing stopping you from adding proprietary constructs to your
> implementation (though this will be frowned on, as has Microsoft's past
> behavior of this kind).

The original thread was borderline-flamage about whose XML database did
a worse job of representing XPath, which is really what I'm speaking
to.  

> Just don't pretend that you're any longer in conformance to the standard.

Standard?  The W3C doesn't create standards.  And if it's not a
standard, there's no overwhelming motivation to support it to the letter
other than for the sake of interoperability, which can't effectively be
done in these scenarios anyway.  

My point is that the W3C specs are inadequate when it comes to
addressing the requirements of XML databases, and so far nobody has
proven this otherwise.  You've only evangelized conformance to W3C
specs, which paint us into a corner for the sake of marketing it as a
'standard'.   

If I haven't made it clear already, my goal in anything I do is to serve
as an advocate for casual to intermediate users of these technologies. 
The highly focused professionals and academics who are creating these
specs have completely lost site of the fact that at the end of the day,
it's your users who will judge you, and not your peers.  Personally, I
don't give a crap how my peers judge me.

-- 
Tom Bradford
The dbXML Project
Open Source Native XML Database
http://www.dbxml.org