[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: W3C's five new XQuery/Xpath2 working drafts - Still miss
At 02:24 PM 1/2/2002 +0000, Sean McGrath wrote: >>[Michael Champion] >>The larger issues that Mike Kay raises are critical: All this committee work >>is for nothing if the result is too complex or expensive to actually use. I >>am not all that much dumber than the average software developer, I have >>followed the XML world full-time for 5 years now, and this >>schema/PSVI/strongly-typed XQuery stuff makes my head spin. I can't imagine >>what ordinary developers who don't focus on XML will think of it. >> >>Actually, come to think of it, I can ... it will be C++ and the Windows API >>all over again; few developers go anywhere near it without GUI tools and >>wizards to hide the complexity behind a proprietary front end. Formalisms are a helpful way to design something that is simple and consistent. For most users, formalisms are not easy to grasp, so they are not a good way to present a language to a user. Languages quite commonly are designed using tools that the user is not exposed to - relatively few users read the EBNF description of the languages they use, learn the formal type system, or understand precisely how polymorphism is implemented. In a well-designed language, this does not prevent them from using the syntax, the types, polymorphism, etc based on an informal understanding. RELAX-NG is a simple and straightforward language, but it is defined with formalisms quite similar to those of the XML Query Formal Semantics. XML Schema is not as simple and straightforward as RELAX-NG, and this may be partly due to the fact that its formal semantics were defined after the language itself - had it been done earlier, I think XML Schema would be simpler for end users. I think XQuery is pretty easy and straightforward for end users. >Thus playing right into the hands of those who would make lock us in >to their tools. As data owners, we need to fight this. When really smart >people start talking about needing GUIs to grok what some notation really >*means*, they are wittingly or otherwise heading down the vendor-lockin >fork in the road. I disagree - the formalisms ensure that the language is unambiguously specified, which ensures interoperability. Most programmers work perfectly well with a somewhat vague understanding of what their languages do - adequate for programming, but not adequate for implementing the language. I doubt very much that people will learn XQuery by reading the Formal Semantics. The language specification itself is also becoming more oriented toward implementors. >I fully expect to get flamed for that statement but what the heck. >I'm trying to grok some vendor locked in XML at the moment and consequently >I'm not in a very good humour. XQuery is being widely implemented - surely you are not claiming that it is a proprietary vendor scheme? If so, which vendor are you accusing? Since the original language, Quilt, was created by people from Software AG, IBM, and Crossgain, I assume one or more of these companies must have hatched the plot.... Jonathan
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