emix — archive

[William Cox <wtcox@coxsoftwarearchitects.com>]

Anne, Jeremy, and others -- This has gotten off track of the original theme, I think, which was namespace maintenance AKA versioning. I'm repeating and extending an earlier message to put it in this thread; it's really very effective to keep this discussion in comments on the namespace Jira item, EMIX-317 and one I've created for possible schema version inclusion discussion  -- having separate discussions apart from the issues makes it harder to work efficiently in my experience, so please put your comments as this thread matures into the Jira items. WS-Calendar uses for namespace definition (as do many OASIS specifications) the year and month of publication.  Using the date to disambiguate namespaces is a common approach. See (e.g.) Service Component Architecture, WS-Calendar, and more. A time sequence of major/minor versions is identified by the date. The most frequently changing versions we've had are working drafts, where we sometimes have several (including wip ) a week. But the namespace changes at Committee Specification Drafts and Committee Specification. The benefit of the scheme in http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/41708/EMIX_Namespace_Declarations_and_Maintenance_Policy_20110403.rtf is that it identifies the production date; the disadvantage (minor IMO) is that it doesn't readily support minor revisions that are more frequent than monthly. I've also found that the management of major/minor for specs like this is often more costly than the benefit obtained. Finally, we use a schemaVersion attribute in Energy Interop to identify the schema version in major classes.  The same approach might be used in EMIX, and given the relationships of the specs it should be the same mechanism and same naming in Calendar, EMIX, and EI. My next note will explore the pluses and minuses of creating and using a schema versioning mechanism in addition to the required namespace maintenance plan. Thanks! bill William Cox Email: wtcox@CoxSoftwareArchitects.com Web: http://www.CoxSoftwareArchitects.com +1 862 485 3696 mobile +1 908 277 3460 fax On 4/4/11 12:07 PM, Carl Reed wrote: E74DE475BA1D4FD2996EC0BB69EB4375@CarlandSusieOf type= cite >Version numbers of documents and encodings and communication of version(s) supported by an interface has been an ongoing dialogue in the OGC ever since we started interface spec design. We have stated policies. If these policies would help in the EMIX version discussion, please let me know and I can provide them. Regards Carl