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My organization is starting to apply namespaces to its various specs. I
know the general discussion and likes/dislikes about them, but I don't
think I have seen anyone address them from the following viewpoint, so I'd
be interested in some discussion.
There seem to be the following views or ways to use a namespace:
1) Original spec seems to see them as a way to disambiguate two elements
with the same name - plain and simple no semantics or other
overhead/overloading of their use.
2) In schemas, they with some of the attributes in <Import> seem to handle
the same functionality of the DOCTYPE and its PUBLIC and SYSTEM identifiers.
3) Coming from the OO world seems to be the notion of domains for
vocabularies. We have a banking domain, an insurance domain, a
manufacturing domain, and legal domain. The element <title> might be used
in all of these domains, but I should identify the domain that it comes
from by using the proper namespace to identify its definition.
4) A namespace as a owned resource that should be protected from other
groups and organizations stepping on it. This came up in regards to use of
<redefine> to add or enhance my organizations definitions with company
unique information or requirements.
I work for ACORD an Insurance industry standards group and when we had a
general meeting on namespace usage all of the above definitions and uses
were brought up. I personally think at least #3 is a different sort of use
for namespaces when we need to answer the following questions, and that #4
is a rather restrictive way to view their use when trying to extend a
specification.
Questions:
Q1) I have 3 different standards within our organization and they may have
the same elements and some of the same structures. How should namespaces be
used to identify these particular standards? Should I have one Insurance
domain namespace?
Our standards are currently divided along the lines of Life, Property,
Causality and Surety, and Reinsurance, should I have different namespace
for each? At least one of these specs has been split into 2 parts, one
being the payload (business/Insurance data) and the other being a framework
or messaging structure that includes the payload portion.
Should this be all one namespace or should they be at least 2 namespaces?
Should the included portion be identifiable by 2 namespaces (one namespace
being when used standalone and the other when used in the message structure)?
Q2) Should a namespace be versioned? This is more for file and element
identification which fits #1 and #2, but seems contrary to #3.
Q3) Should a namespace act like a PUBLIC Identifier and be able to identify
a specific file and version of a schema (lets ignore DTDs for now)? This
doesn't mean that I would be able to look up the URL and find the schema,
but that there should be a unique name/namespace for each version.
Q4) Should my organization be "protecting" our namespace and make sure that
no one <redefine>'s that namespace to be something unique for them?
..dan
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Danny Vint
http://www.dvint.com
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