> XSD is a failure by any sane technical measure.
Yes, it's ugly, and very hard to use, and doesn't do a lot of things that
people might like it to do.
But you could say all that of Windows, and Windows is not exactly a failure,
though you could argue that in a saner world it would be.
There are other measures of success that are not entirely insane:
(a) it meets all the requirements that were specified at the start of the
project.
(b) it has half a dozen decent implementations, with a level of
interoperability that's not unreasonable by computer industry standards
(much better than SQL, for example).
(c) it's used by large numbers of people, many of whom have a choice.
(d) it does most of the things that most of those people need it to do.
(e) it underpins a large number of industry standards that enable effective
interchange of data around the world, creating enormous value by oiling the
wheels of commerce.
If it were really such a total failure, wouldn't the spec be gathering dust,
rather than being actively discussed on this list?
Regards,
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay
