• From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 10:09:51 -0700

Robert Worden  wrote:

> A suggestion: in parallel with anything else you do, re-express the Schema
> spec in a  mathematical specification language such as VDM or Z. Publish a
> mathematically annotated  version of the spec.

Or, use techniques from denotational semantics
like Phil Wadler did for early drafts of XPath and
XSL [1,2].

This would IMO be even more useful for the Schema spec.
Z is good at specifying "what things do", while denotational
semantics is good at defining "what things mean".  Since a Schema
doesn't really "do" anything, DS might be more appropriate.

Also, DS notation tends to be considerably shorter than Z :-)


--Joe English

  jenglish@f...

[1] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/wadler/topics/xml.html#xsl-semantics
[2] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/wadler/topics/xml.html#xpath-semantics

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