RE: [xml-dev] namespaces (was RE: [xml-dev] rss regularis(z)ation)

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Champion [mailto:mc@xegesis.org] 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2003 7:18 PM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] namespaces (was RE: [xml-dev] rss 
> regularis(z)ation)
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if Bill lives in Sean's world (AFAIK they both work at 
> Propylon) but Sean has written several interesting bits on 
> namespaces that 
> seem to support what Bill is saying:

I read the three IT World articles, none seem to be grounded in any sort
of technical criticism but instead were full of opinionated statements
with no corraborating technical evidence or actual basis in fact. In
addition, some of them contained quite awful advice. 

> http://www.itworld.com/nl/ebiz_ent/03252003/

The aboriginal "data heads" from the relational database culture created
XML namespaces as a way to invent primary keys in XML documents? This
entire premise is nonsensical. I'm almost be amused by the fact that the
article states that all you need to determine the identify of an element
is to look at its name and scope in the document. 

> 
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/xml-dev/1654227
> ["Oh, there is one way to stay sane and still use namespaces. 
> Get all your 
> tools from end to end from a single vendor."]

In his experience namespaces have caused more problems than they've
fixed. In my experience they haven't. Of course, everyone can dish out
anecdotal tales of how Technology X or Technology Y was a poor fit in a
particular instance. After all, didn't McKinsey just publish something
similar on "The Truth About XML" at
http://news.com.com/2030-1085_3-1025872.html 


> http://www.itworld.com/nl/xml_prac/04112002/

The core point here is that XML namespaces makes XML technologies more
complex than if they just supported XML 1.0. Agreed. 

XML technologies would also be easier if they didn't support the more
esoteric aspects of XML 1.0 as well (parameterized entities, CDATA
sections, DTDs, PIs, etc). This doesn't these features are not
beneficial. 

> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/xml-dev/1656220
 
Another all you need is an element's position in the document to
uniquely identify it post. So all I need is an element's position to
uniquely identify it in an XSLT stylesheet or a WordML document? This
argument works in the simplest of cases or when you have a priori
knowledge of all the data that will be in your document.  
 

-- 
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM 
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.


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