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RE: Namespaces, W3C XML Schema (was Re: ANN: SAX Filters forNamespacePro

• From: "Fuchs, Matthew" <matthew.fuchs@c...>
• To: Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@m...>,Xml-Dev <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 10:56:55 -0700

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@m...]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 8:29 AM
> To: Xml-Dev
> Subject: Re: Namespaces, W3C XML Schema (was Re: ANN: SAX Filters
> forNamespaceProcessing)
> 
> 
> At 10:25 PM -0700 8/21/01, Ronald Bourret wrote:
> >Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> >
> >> I am concerned that the theoretical use of schemas for typing is
> >> overriding their practical use for constraint checking.
> >
> >The use isn't theoretical. Witness all the products that generate
> >classes from XML Schemas.
> >
> 
> And witness all the people using these products NOT. I 
> classify this stuff along with tree-based XML editors and 
> binary variants of XML as something that gets reinvented 
> several times a month without any actual market demand. 
> 

In fact, I probably built the first such class generator for Java at the
beginning of 1998 and after several iterations, SOX (and hence complexTypes)
partly came into being to make it possible to generate useable classes.
Without a schema language which actually supports some OO features, it is
extremely difficult to generate useable classes without a lot of additional
metadata.  The bean generators built on SOX have been used very successfully
by hundreds of programmers.  In any case, I consider class generators just
one of many schema-based tools which will come into existence over the next
few years, and they will make people's lives easier.

> On the other hand, over the last three years as I've taught 
> developers about DTDs, almost invariably the first question 
> is "How do I say that an element contains an int?" and the 
> second question is usually ""How do I say that an element 
> contains a year since 1969?" or some variant thereof. 
> 
> >> Very few people
> >> are actually using schemas for typing. Instead they're 
> being used for
> >> validation.
> >
> >I think it depends on how you do the counting. Clearly, the number of
> >people validating schemas outnumbers the number of people 
> writing code
> >that explores them. This is a restatement of the fact that 
> the number of
> >document authors is greater than the number of programmers.
> >
> >If you count applications, validators are a minority.
> 
> I count people as worth more than programs. 
> 

Right, which is why validators, bean generators, etc., are so valuable, even
when they are a small minority of the number of applications, because they
are what will make people's live easier.  Since I count people as worth more
than programs, I want to help write those programs which will help people
get more done with less additional programs.

Matthew

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