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RE: The use of XML syntax in XML Query

• To: "Jonathan Robie" <jonathan.robie@s...>,"David Carlisle" <davidc@n...>
• Subject: RE: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
• From: "Evan Lenz" <elenz@x...>
• Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 10:34:00 -0800
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• Importance: Normal
• In-reply-to: <5.1.0.14.0.20020103193747.04162120@s...>

Jonathan Robie wrote:
> >Go to http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery/ and search for "xmlns" to see what I
> >mean.
>
> Well, since I wrote that section, I would be very interested in
> hearing why
> you feel this is a reinvention of XML namespaces.

It's self-evident that this is a reinvention of XML namespaces (though
incomplete and underspecified). The fact that you wrote the section implies
that you think this is okay. I draw attention to the passage, because I
suspect that concerned individuals on xml-dev may want to express
alternative viewpoints.

It's a reinvention because the interpretation of things like
"xmlns:foo='http://whatever.com'" is defined in terms of the (XML-like)
syntax, rather than in terms of the Infoset (or some data model, e.g. XPath)
that's abstracted away from the syntactic interpretation of namespaces as
defined in the XML Names recommendation. This is just another symptom of
trying to use an XML-like syntax, rather than XML syntax itself.

The complexity and redundancy resulting from the XML-like syntax is
significantly compounded by the subsequent attempt to support things that
look like XML namespace declarations. Eventually you'll have to
cut-and-paste the entire XML Names recommendation, tweak it to show how it
interacts with "NAMESPACE foo=http://whatever.com", and then ask yourself if
XML Namespaces weren't already difficult enough to understand on their own.

Where does this end? Is it a goal to provide a syntactic superset of XML 1.0
+ XML namespaces, i.e. XML++? If so, then you've left out DOCTYPE
declarations.

This endeavor seems a little disproportionate compared to the benefit gained
by not having to put a root element around every query.

Evan

• References:
  • RE: The use of XML syntax in XML Query
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@s...>

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