Re: [xml-dev] XML schema Management

["Fraser Goffin" <goffinf@googlemail.com>]

Yes and No. I am really talking about how the design of schemata (and
as Michael mentioned other artefacts like XSLT) on an enterprise
scale, can/should be based on a common core (and versioned) data model
rather than each project building service definitions which may/may
not mainatin consistency in the semantics and syntax.

When there are only a few services and associated schema you can just
about get away without tooling, common standards, an indexed
repository of core artefacts, and so on ... but as these increase
(which is I guess where the efforts in my organisation are about now)
it becomes clearer that this small scale effort will soon (and
quickly) be overwhelmed.

Aside from the technical benefits, a key challenge is convicing our
business sponsors of the need for such efforts since, as always,
infrastructure is a tough sell. Short-termism and the attraction of
JFDI are still powerful advocates that often cause standards efforts
to fail, not perhaps because sponsors don't 'get it' but possibly more
because each sponsor is hoping that someone else will pick up the tab.

Fraser.

On 08/09/06, Nathan Young -X (natyoung - Artizen at Cisco)
<natyoung@cisco.com> wrote:
> So are you talking about auto generating a bunch of schemas based on a
> core description of the data model and a set of rules for getting from
> the core description to each individual case you need?  Or am I
> misunderstanding?
>
> ---->Nathan
>
>
>
> .:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:||:._.:
> ||:.
>
> Nathan Young
> Cisco.com->Interface Development
> A: ncy1717
> E: natyoung@cisco.com
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@saxonica.com]
> > Sent: Friday, September 08, 2006 9:45 AM
> > To: 'Fraser Goffin'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> > Subject: RE: [xml-dev] XML schema Management
> >
> > > The problem : managing the production, versioning,
> > > consistency, .... of a large number of XML schema (typically
> > > for message based service interfaces) spawned from a core
> > > business domain data model.
> >
> > I've seen other people struggle with this problem. I haven't
> > seen it solved,
> > but I've come to the conclusion that you need to put a lot of
> > effort into
> > tooling, and I strongly suspect you are better off developing
> > your own tools
> > in-house that are designed to your own specific requirements
> > - though I
> > can't say that's based on detailed study of what the market can offer.
> >
> > I have seen an analagous problem solved, of managing hundreds
> > of stylesheets
> > for processing different transactions in an online banking
> > system. This was
> > done by devising a common high-level description of the
> > various screens, and
> > generating the stylesheets from these master definitions,
> > thus ensuring
> > consistency. I believe it should be possible to do the same thing for
> > controlling a large set of message schemas - but I haven't
> > seen an existence
> > proof.
> >
> > Michael Kay
> > http://www.saxonica.com/
> >
>