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Re: [xml-dev] what's missing in XML? What's coming?

It can be a winning strategy for everyone. :-)

On 4/1/2012 11:49 AM, Henry Luo wrote:
4F03CC54.4020803@candlescript.org" type="cite"> Decoupling XDM from XML syntax has additional advantages:
  • From user perspective, they'll be happy if their effects in learning XML Schema/XSLT/XQuery/XProc can be extended to do direct HTTP/SMTP message handling, shell scripting, etc.
  • From W3C perspective, the XML standards stack will be more important and useful then ever.
Regards

Henry

On 4/1/2012 11:34 AM, Henry Luo wrote:
4F03C8D6.8070703@candlescript.org" type="cite"> Liam and all,

I think this thread of discussion has been a interesting topic. And here's my 2 cents.

I think for XML to evolve, to define an extended and standardized XDM (beyond what's current supported by XML syntax) can be an important and winning strategy. It's already mentioned and hinted several time in this thread already:
  • David Lee: 3) Adoption of the JSON Data model into XDM so that XPath/XSLT/XQuery/Schema can be directly used on JSON data
    Liam: Agreed.
  • Alexander: Actually Fast Infoset always permitted mixing any type of data with character data as part of the node content, and it did so without having to be schema informed since it is self-descriptive. It's just that the spec didn't/doesn't specifically mention that it is supported.
  • Bill Clare: two points mentioned below.
  • XQuery/XSLT DM already extends beyond XML, e.g. root-element is not required;
Decoupling XDM from XML syntax has several advantages:
  • The DM is no longer constrained by the XML syntax. It can evolve to cover wider range of data, like JSON, CSV, MIME Message, file system nodes, zip archive nodes, etc. Among all, the most important is to unify with object data model, like JSON (and JavaFX literal object).
  • XML vendors who have invested heavily to implement XML Schema/XSLT/XQuery, would also benefit from the extended DM, as their products can now support more data formats. The cost of implementing new data parsers/adapters is relatively cheap. This is like the .Net architecture, with one runtime supporting multiple languages.
  • People has the freedom to choice their syntax or serialization format. Whether it is JSON, HTML5, XML or YAML, it no longer matters. What's important is the DM now. People who still depends on legacy XML features (like doctype), like MathML, can live in the old XML world. People who wants better formats can go for XML2.0 or XML5 or XML.next, without the burden of backward syntax compatibility.
  • It can also be an opportunity to clean up the mess in current W3C XML DM related standards, as defined in InfoSet, XML Schema, XPath/XQuery DM, etc. A cleaned up DM would help streamline the integration of XML technologies.
Some of the important features of the extended XDM should include:
  • Clean up the data types, throw away the doctype related types.
  • Allow child node to contain data types other than text.
  • Allow attribute node to contain complex content. This is important in unifying with object data model (JSON map can contain nest map).
  • No need to require root element.
The language, Candle (http://www.candlescript.org/), that I've created, is along this line. Some of the relevant documents are:
Regards

Henry

On 3/1/2012 11:04 PM, BillClare3@aol.com wrote:
786e.6d9ec56b.3c3472ec@aol.com" type="cite">
Liam,
 
    Two thoughts on an interesting topic that could address the fundamentals of XML evolution.
 
Something to add:  Full data type specifications with properties, constraints, associations and event driven methods.  This can move much of behavior specification and implementation out of the agent.  With this, by the way, schema, as currently constructed, specify constructors for data types, not the data types themselves.
 
Something to remove: Distinctions between element attributes and contents.

     Bill
 
In a message dated 1/2/2012 1:06:16 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, liam@w3.org writes:
On Mon, 2012-01-02 at 10:27 -0500, David Lee wrote:
> What's missing ?

David, thanks for replying!

> 1) A Standard (or well adopted convention) for Serialized XDM so that
> programs may exchange XDM in addition to XML

I think (Rich Salz notwithstanding) EXI 2 may do this. Remains to be
seen, but I hope so.

> 2) Better support for XDM in XQuery and XSLT to allow the input 'document'
> to be any XDM value, and corresponding support in the implementations to
> portably read such data (see #1)
I'm not sure on the status of this; the first part is already there I
think, unless you're asking for a further relaxing of constraints in the
XDM - in which case please file a comment against the last call draft of
the XDM 3.0 that was published in December; the Status section of the
document has a link to the Bugzilla instance for doing that.

As for implementations - can you think of ways we could test it? if so,
feel free to contribute tests, or to join the WG :-) or just to bug the
vendors.

>
> 3) Adoption of the JSON Data model into XDM so that XPath/XSLT/XQuery/Schema
> can be directly used on JSON data

Agreed.

>
> 4) A standard/convention for JSON / XDM conversions  to allow #1 as  both
> input and output.

Not sure if this is premature, but it may fall under your No, 3 above.

> 5) "Excel for XML" (or XDM see #1) so prevalent and accepted that it becomes
> acceptable to pass XML among business partners instead of having to convert
> to/from CSV or XLS.

Well, that would be nice. It'd have to offer a business advantage - one
or more of
. faster
. lower cost
. enabling (things you couldn't do before)

Thanks for the feedback!

Liam

--
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/


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