RE: [xml-dev] Lesson Learned: Use namespaces for both markup and data

[Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>]

 > Here is a short article I wrote describing the lesson I learned about the importance of using namespaces for both markup and data:

 >  http://www.xfront.com/namespaces-is-for-markup-and-data/


 >  Your comments are welcome. 

 

If the objects you are referencing are identified by QNames (as XSD types are), then you should certainly use QNames when referring to them.

 

But that doesn't mean all objects should be identified by QNames.

 

QNames can be useful identifiers where you want distributed naming authorities: you can use the namespace to represent the naming authority, each of which can allocate as many local names as they like. But there's a weakness, which is that the delegation only goes one level deep: you can't have a hierarchy of naming authorities.

 

The conventional wisdom in the RDF community seems to be that all objects should be identified by URIs. That's sometimes appropriate, but I'm not a great fan of that either. Most of the time "real world" identifiers (country names, ISO country codes, national insurance numbers etc) work just fine.

 

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay