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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The subsetting has begun
 Mike Champion wrote: > [hating myself for jumping into this permathread once again :-) ] > > On Fri, 21 Feb 2003 07:16:37 -0500, Elliotte Rusty Harold > <elharo@m...> wrote: > >> Sun's recently posted an alpha of J2ME Web Services >> <http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/review/jsr172/index.html> >> This spec defines a subset of JAXP, SAX, and XML which is only >> suitable for processing SOAP messages. ... Among other sins > > > Anyone following sml-dev three years ago would not be surprised to hear > that vendors are subsetting XML for mobile, data-oriented applications. > Where's the "sin" here? What's a cellphone supposed to do with an > external entity reference, or a notation declaration? Should well-known > interoperability antipatterns such as default attribute values be > encouraged in lightweight applications? > >> >> I did not recognize any of the names in the expert group. It is not >> clear if there is any real XML expert in the group who actually >> understands XML at a deep level. > > > Hmm, a group of people out there in the real world took a look at XML, > picked what they thought they could use in their target environment, and > ignored the rest. Reminds me of that effort at the W3C in the mid-90's > to develop something called "SGML for the Web." There are two issues that I can see with specifying more dirty than quick XML subsets. First, is that processors targeted to a subset get built, but are named after the superset. Now, if someone wants to develop a SOAP processor, they should go right ahead. What they should not do is call it an XML processor - that muddies the waters. When they do, I think we have every right to call foul. For example, over on axis-user, I discovered thanks to Denis Sosnoski that XPP3 and Electric XML don't process XML as per the spec. It's already been discussed here that System.Xml defaults to a subset, and although you can configure it to stop acting as System.SOAP and process XML, I'm not sure about the other two (Denis says XPP3 can work with XML with a parser swapout). Second, XML is being subsetted for problem domains without much visible thought for the cost of that subsetting. How are all these optimized systems supposed to work together a few years out? There are people who do not appreciate the value of what uniform format offers, or what its potential economic value is. Perhaps this is because we technologists are mentally stuck on foolish optimizations in specification designs as well as software - we're still worrying about the metal. Someone on axis-user said that making processors comply with the more esoteric parts of XML would be compliance for its own sake. But isn't compliance the point? If SOAP ever gets subsetted, it will interesting to see how the web services community reacts. Subsetting XML seems as much an issue for 'interoperability' as targeting schemas and infosets does. It's good news that people like Don Box and Tim Ewald say they are now appreciating the value of staying near XML syntax, but we might be some time waiting for consensus that a finger food approach to XML was not such a good idea. The people behind sml-dev got this right, technically and economically - they specified the subset for everyone's use. Perhaps similar work could be chartered by the W3C, or kicked off again on xml-dev. Bill de hÓra 
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