(retry due to SMTP problems)
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:23:49 -0700
To:
From: "G. Ken Holman" <>
Subject: Re: [codelist] Interesting article about extending
enumeration lists in XML Schema
At 2008-09-25 04:05 +0000, wrote:
>Came across this interesting article.
Yes, I also saw reference to this and it was in today's Robin Cover summary.
>Rules out genericode based approach in the study.
>
>http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-extenum/
Sure he does ... but from what I read his proposal doesn't address
everything that genericode does for deployments such as UBL because
of his focus.
The only genericode lists that are "extended" in UBL are those
without definition ... that is to say they are a restriction of an
infinite set of all possible values.
I see using genericode with context/value association allowing
different users to have different restrictions on lists without
having different schemas.
Furthermore genericode with context/value association allows
different restrictions on the same enumeration used in different
contexts of the one document. I don't believe this can be addressed
in W3C Schema when using global types.
While, yes, you could put value-level meta data and list-level meta
data in appinfo constructs in a W3C Schema enumeration, genericode
allows one to selectively use the available keys without having to
change the file in any way.
So I don't think his "ruling out" of genericode really affects people
considering solutions that need the flexibility not offered by W3C Schema.
In fact, I think that since the article is *about* extending lists in
W3C Schema (based on the title) it makes sense that he cannot talk
about genericode. His observation about genericode that reads
"Adding new technology requirements can be too costly or
time-consuming in some settings." is, I think too subjective ... if a
user's problem is solved by genericode and not by W3C Schema then
either they change their requirements or they accept that they need
as much software as is needed to solve their problem. There will be
many implementations of genericode and context/value association ...
in many contexts such as document data entry or document validation.
But did you notice the last bullet of the conclusion?
"If you want to keep enumerated values out of the parser, consider
the Genericode approach"
Sounds to me like he is affirming genericode's existence and role
when users are prepared to do without W3C schema enumerations to get
the advantages of genericode and context/value association.
. . . . . . . . . . Ken
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