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From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>
> Wow, talk about taking out of context. You managed to turn an over
> two thousand word email in support of the IETF's endorsement of
> W3C XML Schema into an indictment of it.
I am not indicting XML Schemas, nor saying that posting indicts it. I have repeatedly said I think XML Schemas should be good for particular tasks. I am on friendly relations with several members of the Schemas WG, which I participated on, and I wish it well and I respect them. My company has two products that use it.
What I am saying, and I have yet to meet any users in the industrial
publishing industry who disagrees, is that XML Schemas is deficient to the point of irrelevence for a large niche, and that the answer is not to bloat it but to build a schema language on a modular framework. I am only against XML Schemas to the extent that I am for plurality and richness; in other words, I am only opposed to XML Schemas to the extent that it is pushed as a universal schema language that cannot tolerate alternatives.
If the XML Schemas WG uses the ISO DSDL as input for further revisions of XSD in the future, great! If they decide that ISO DSDL
meets various niche needs and so relieves them of having to bloat
out XSD further, that is also great! If the XML Schema WG comes up with an alternative and better approach, stimulated by the issues that DSDL is addressing, wonderful! The users benefit; the world is richer.
If, a year from now, Microsoft discovers that XML Schemas 1.0 is such a hard sell that it is getting in the way of .NET, for example, it can only help MS if there are credible alternatives.
> Saying XSD 2.0 will
> add features not in XSD 1.0 does not translate into XSD is not here
> to stay in any way, shape or form.
The way things normally work, one would expect the version 1.1 of something to be either backwards or forwards compatible, but the version 2.0 to be a reformulation, and certainly not necessarily compatible in syntax or components.
I don't believe that the XML Schema WG would be willing to make
any undertaking that XML 2.0, if it is ever made, will be a superset
of XML 1.n in its syntax, its components, its semantics, or even its outcomes.
To the extent that that is the case, to say "XSD is here to stay" is
a statement of branding and power rather than anything concerning
technical merits or compatability.
Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
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