Anti-rush, Anti-complexity, pro-XML rant (was RE: [xml-dev] XQuery and DTD/Schema?)

[Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@propylon.com>]

 >No architectural difficulty, just a hell of a lot of hard work and
 >another year on the schedules...

Trouble is of course that if the stuff is shipped before its ready - 
"standardized" to use the word that all the
consumers of this stuff use - it will just die a death after a year or so 
of being hyped to the skies
by some of the big vendors. It will cost all of us a bunch of time and money.

Then the grass roots of the IT world pick up the pieces. No wonder IT 
spending has such a
bad reputation!

After a couple of years, all the currently hatching complexity will either 
be "profiled" into a usable
subset or supplanted by something simpler that learns from its mistakes.

This pattern is repeated over and over again in the IT world (Q. Where did 
XML come?). Its about
time we recognized
it and started using it to our advantage.

I'm willing to bet that  WXS, XQuery, XPath 2 and the whole PSVI thing 
*will* be the
subject of this pattern. The only other possibility - which
is worse - it will be so complex that the only way to make it work is get
all your tools from one supplier. Nice one.

I hereby offer to turn up at an XML conference in 2006 with a salmon steak and
a bowl of petunias on my head if this stuff is not radically subsetted or
simply ignored by large parts of the XML world in the medium term. The only
other possibility is that it will only be available from a select number of 
vendors
in which case I will not be involved in XML in 2006.

I'm happy to go on the record here on XML-DEV and say that if I can possibly
avoid it I will not be touching any of these things (WXS, PSVI, XQuery) because
I believe the complexity they bring is so seriously out of whack with the 
features
they bring. Also they bend XML out of shape to the point where I for one,
hardly recognize it any more.

Sadly,
Sean