RE: [xml-dev] Which Will Be Released First, the W3C's XQuery Spec or Longhorn?

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

I'm not sure what requiring Open Source implementations has to do with
how long the W3C takes to produce standards. Unless you are claiming
lack of Open Source implementations is what is delaying XQuery/XSLT
2.0/XPath 2.0 [which runs counter to my experiences] then I'm not sure
what the first half of your post has to do with the second half. 

--
PITHY WORDS OF WISDOM 
Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure.


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Don Demsak [mailto:donxml@gmail.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 6:47 AM
> To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: [xml-dev] Which Will Be Released First, the W3C's 
> XQuery Spec or Longhorn?
> 
> The following is from my blog entry:
> http://donxml.com/allthingstechie/archive/2004/10/13/1421.aspx
> 
> Microsoft has been taking in on the chin recently for the 
> delays in releasing Longhorn (including from yours truly), 
> but I'd like to point out another 800lb gorilla that should 
> be taken to task for taking too long to release a product, 
> the W3C.  Some people love to bash Microsoft, and typically 
> the same folks look the other way when the W3C does something 
> similar.  In case you haven't heard, Dare announced that 
> XQuery will not be a part of the .Net 2.0 beta 2 release (and 
> the final release).  The reason, the estimated time that the 
> XQuery spec will become a recommendation isn't until late 
> 2005, which is after .Net 2.0 will be released.  Microsoft 
> got burned badly when they released code based on working 
> drafts of XSL back in IE 5.0, and they can't let that happen 
> again.  In case you don't remember, XSL looked like it was 
> ready to go, and very late in the game the W3C members 
> decided to rewrite the spec and split it into two (XSLT and XSL-FO). 
> I spent years on the VBXML XSLT discussion group trying to 
> explain to developers that there were 2 versions of XSL out 
> there, and it was very confusing for the majority of developers.
> 
> So, Microsoft has decided to be cautious and limit their 
> exposure on XQuery and have limited support within SQL Server 
> 2005.  I don't blame them on this.  The XQuery spec has been 
> an official W3C Working Draft since February 2001 and is 
> still a Working Draft (over 3 years later).
>  It still has to go thru the complete process (Working Draft 
> to Candidate Recommendation to Proposed Recommendation and 
> finally W3C Recommendation).  I don't think it would be 
> beyond some of the business on the committee to purposely 
> slow down the recommendation process in order to give their 
> companies time to catch up to level of support Microsoft has 
> for XQuery.  So which one do you think will be released first 
> Longhorn or the W3C's XQuery spec?
> 
> One of my major complaints with the W3C (and other standards
> organizations) is that they just produce standards, not 
> implementations of the standards.  I understand that software 
> companies have a vested interest in releasing products 
> according to a specification, but without having a publicly 
> accessible implementation of the spec to work with during the 
> draft process it makes it very difficult to create test 
> cases.  The writers of the spec have to resort to thought 
> exercises to test their ideas.  My idea is to marry a 
> standards organization with an open source community (think 
> of merging the W3C and SourceForge), but put a hard division 
> between the two groups.  In order to prevent intellectual 
> property leakage from the businesses on the standards org 
> side to the open source side, individuals from one side can 
> not work on the other (for a given spec).  This way there is 
> a living example for the standards group to work the bugs out 
> of (before it becomes a recommendation), and should 
> streamline the specification process.  I know licensing can 
> become a hairy issue here, so that is why I keep the 2 sides 
> divided.  A company on the standards committee does not risk 
> exposing its IP to the open source implementation, and the 
> reverse should be true too. 
> To make this work, the open source project leaders would need 
> to have very good access to the working draft committee.  In 
> a perfect world, there would be at least 2 open source 
> implementations (.Net and Java), and even the code based on 
> rejected implementations would be available for all (which is 
> something some of the MS MVPs in XML have been asking of MS 
> for libraries that were abandoned).
> 
> 
> Don Demsak
> 
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