Re: [xml-dev] UBL

["bryan rasmussen" <rasmussen.bryan@gmail.com>]

Just wondering, did you post to xml-dev because you thought that
getting an impartial response on any of the UBL lists would be
difficult or because you wanted to get perspectives outside UBL?

Regards,
Bryan Rasmussen

On 3/17/06, Dave Scott <dms@haplos.com> wrote:
> I was curious about opinions and experiences people on the list might
> have regarding the UBL NDR:
>
> -  Am I alone in finding it too be overly draconian?
> -  What practical limitations (particularly processing limitations)
> have you encountered when implementing the standard?
>
> Perhaps my biggest problem with the NDR  is the prohibition against
> custom attributes.  I'm contributing to a workgroup to develop a data
> standard which will be used to transmit potentially huge data sets.
> Understandably, we'd like the standard to be friendly to stream
> processing.  The ability to add "type" and "role" attributes in key
> places in the schema would greatly aid processing the data in a way
> that would only require examining the current element stack during
> stream processing for our most typical use cases.  The UBL proponents
> on the workgroup propose requiring such items to be a first child
> (rather than attribute) of the node they qualify so as to act as a
> processing flag for its siblings and siblings' children.
>
> My problem with this approach is that if an element has a scoping
> relationship to the rest of the children of the parent, if at all
> possible, I believe you should make that relation explicit by making
> it an atttribute of the parent.  Also, I believe you shouldn't  add
> ordering constraints to your schema, burdening both the production
> and validation of the data set, unless there is a semantic
> motivation.  Lastly, I believe that if at all possible you should
> design the schema to be compatible with the widest range of generic
> tools (e.g., tools that only consider the current ancestor hierarchy
> during stream processing, like STX) rather than requiring future
> users of the standard to write one-off processors (e.g., custom SAX
> handlers.)
>
> A couple of key individuals on the workgroup are adamant about
> adhering to the UBL NDR (although not very articulate when it comes
> to justifying either the individual requirements of the NDR or the
> blanket decision to follow it slavishly.)  Unfortunately, the
> literature I've been able to turn up regarding the UBL NDR all reads
> like marketing literature rather than frank evaluations of the trade-
> offs the NDR involves. (My best source has been the UBL mail archives
> but it's fragmented and skimpy on this topic.)  Can anyone point me
> to some more thoughtful evaluations of the NDR?  Or, perhaps,
> implementations of CCTS that allow custom attributes?  Or, better
> yet, UBL endorsed mechanisms for integrating custom attributes with
> otherwise UBL NDR compliant schema?
>
> Dave
>
>
>
>
>
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