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Re: XML-with-datatypes (was....)

• To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Subject: Re: XML-with-datatypes (was....)
• From: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>
• Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 09:54:06 -0500
• Cc: Elliotte Harold <elharo@m...>, Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>, Vladimir Gapeyev <vgapeyev@s...>, XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
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On 10/14/05, Bullard, Claude L (Len) <len.bullard@i...> wrote:
>

<snip/>

>
> Do you think Vladimir's proposal to add to the xml: namespace to signify
> stronger typing
> is worth the risk of semantic expansion of that namespace?  As I said, I
> don't see the
> benefit of welding a strong typing mechanism to the core when it can be done
> in the
> application and there are variations on doing that (XSD builds in
> primitives; RELAX
> takes the bolt-in).  Optionality isn't a defense.  People trip on it just as
> they
> trip over the XML prolog (per Eric's blog on Lawyers Shouldn't Type XML).

A has been been observed, it seems that this thread is 80% perma but
it amazes me that it's been over two years since this comment:

| Back in the days when I had time to hang out on the xslt list I found
| myself giving a use case where strong typing would help us.  Now-a-days,
| I've worked around it so much I no longer want it.  Essentially, we can
| annotate a node from the back end with a type attribute and be done with
| it once and for all; pretty much everything we ever needed to do with
| types is now possible.

[1]

I'll make the observation, that this is still true, but I don't want
just a single type attribute and I want to be able to define my own
semantics for it.  My reasoning is as follows:

- If your data is travelling outside of a single well controlled
domain then you either have to somehow standardize on a well defined
type hierarchy or you have to allow for polymorphism on the types
attached to any given element.

- Well defined type hierarchies may be possible but the effort to
create them seems to be exponentially related to the number of users
so their generality comes with a high cost (ie; XSD).

- Allowing each domain to attach a type that is semantically
meaningful to them allows me to skip the cost of standardization and
builds a loosely coupled type ontology for me at a much lower cost. 
We can now discover that domain A has a "enrollment-date" that is
somehow related to domain Bs "date-on-protocol" but we don't have to
agree a-priori on which of these two terms will be used to define the
type of a given element, (or exactly what they mean).

So, attributes it is, but ad-hoc attributes, and no W3C reserved
namespaces unless we get some kind of uber-namespace (and I don't want
to go there).

--
Peter Hunsberger

[1]: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200306/msg00317.html

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XML-with-datatypes (was....)
    • From: Uche Ogbuji <Uche.Ogbuji@f...>
  • Re: XML-with-datatypes (was....)
    • From: Vladimir Gapeyev <vgapeyev@s...>

• References:
  • RE: XML-with-datatypes (was....)
    • From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>

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