Cart
|
[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] XML Schemas now Proposed Recommendation at W3C
 W3C has now released the Proposed Recommendation versions of XML Schemas 1.0, at http://www.w3.org/ A Proposed Recommendation is the step before a final Recommendation. My expectation is that there will be no changes to the technology before moving to Recommendation. On this list I have frequently posted that people should be cautious about implementing XML Schemas for production systems, because it and its implementations have been in flux. So it is appropriate to withdraw that warning for the PR version: of course, with the caveats that I am not speaking on behalf of anyone but myself, that there is always a slight chance that there will be some changes for 1.0, and that implementations will naturally lag behind. The new specifications have been thoroughly revised, restructured and reformatted for clarity. Henry Thompson, the editor of the Structures spec, gets a lot of flack for his highly-structured, checklist style. But I believe it is very valuable that the Structures specification has been edited by an actual developer of a Schema validator (XSV) who is conciously organizing the decisions of the Schemas working group in the light of that experience for other developers. For clarity, there are now more examples, better overview and navigation material, fluff has been cut, the Primer provides a very nice introduction for the laity, there is a formalization in the works (MSL) which will help type-theorists, and there is even a couple of pictures now. I believe XML Schemas will be particularly useful for electronic commerce and business; especially for connecting to databases, automatically generating interfaces between processes, for optimized queries, and for XHTML. It is quite likely that there will be an XML Schemas 1.1. (Procedurally, it would not be decided to work on this until after the REC comes out and the Schema WG gets re-chartered, so no-one can actually promise it.) Topics that one might expect to be examined for XML Schemas 1.1 include modularization, subsets, internationalization, date/time, keys, and cross-pollenation from the 2000/2001 crop of schema languages (RELAX, TREX, Schematron, etc.). I am hopeful. I hope, in future discussions of XML Schemas, we can separate issues related to its features from how those features are used. I think it is quite consistent to hold that - XML Schemas is a good thing for many people because it meets a big community's legitimate need and has been exhaustively and well-prepared - lots of things would be different if I were King of the world - there is nothing stopping anyone or any group making their own schema languages, and that innovation and competition (and marketplace "confusion") are not the enemies of XML Schemas (alternative schema languages provide new ideas for XML Schema's evolution; alternative schema languages allow people for whom XML Schemas is not appropriate to get their jobs done and therefore would decrease discontent; alternative schema languages, if orthogonal, are layers that can be used with XML Schemas, reducing the need for it to grow to cover more and more cases.) Open systems thrive by allowing oraganic plurality. - the issue of the impact of XML Schemas (how it will be used in other new specifications, in particular dependencies on PSVI information that cannot be trivially serialized as attributes to augment the original XML document ) is important. In other words, if I say "PSVI-reliance in new specs stinks" that is not the same as saying "XML Schemas [expletive deleted]". That's my spin on it, as it looks now, anyway. Cheers Rick Jelliffe P.S. I am leaving Taiwan, Geotempo and Academia Sinica, to return to Sydney to finish a new book "XML Schemas Interlinear" and a great project with Allette Systems, my old employers in the mid-90s. All my current email accounts should continue to operate. I am very interested in feedback to know what the most common stumbling blocks people have when trying to figure out XML Schemas and the various W3C specifications: please email ricko@a... if you have any dirt. 
|
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! 
Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|
|||||||||
