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Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@propylon.com> complains:
> Namespaces cause more problems than they fix. This has been
> my experience,
> and the experience
> of the 20 odd XML developers who work for Propylon over the
> last couple of
> years. Perhaps our
> experience is unusual but I doubt it. More often than not,
> when you go into
> new client engagements to
> sort out XML problems, we find XML transwrecks in the hallways.
>
> Earlier somebody compared namespaces to condoms - they provide extra
> protection. On the
> contrary, I would suggest that namespaces are an STD that should be
> assiduously avoided.
Umm, that would have been me... I'm not going to argue that the current
implementation of name spaces is easy to use. In fact I pointed out that
the first thing we do once we start to work with a document and understand
it in context is strip out the name spaces. That to me is the way around
this whole problem: when you send your data out into the wild add the name
spaces. When you work with it locally, get rid of the name space.
Name spaces are only useful if you are going to possibly have some ambiguous
collision of names. Once you are in control of the processing context you
can (mostly, but not always) arrange for this not to be the case. When
you're not in control of the processing provide the extra information to at
least allow other people deal with the possible ambiguities.
Yes, this gives the receiver extra work. Perhaps you think figuring out
ambiguous semantics and syntax is easier? Name spaces aren't perfect but
they are far easier to deal with then, say, X.12 notation...
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