[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The subsetting has begun
"Cavnar-Johnson, John" wrote: > How would standardizing a class of processors that don't process the > internal subset, entities, etc. jeopardize what you have achieved? If > there are costs to my proposal that I don't see now, I would like to hear > them, but don't impute to me positions that I do not hold. Your > processor(s) can still handle the documents that these systems would > produce. If you use the features that are eliminated from the subset, then > consumers of your documents would need to use a processor capable > of dealing with them. Is that cost really significant, and if so, please > explain? As last week's discussion made clear, such processors are non-conformant to the XML Rec. That is the reason de jure not to create documents intended for such processors and then call either those documents or those processors 'XML'. But you are correct that here I am arguing against a different danger. As a processor of documents I am not a party to bilateral or even cartel agreements as to the form of those documents. The unique advantage of well-formed XML documents in the internetwork topology is that I do not have to be. The salient point of processing nodes in the internetwork topology is that they are uniquely identified by what they produce and publish (as documents), but not by what they consume. This is in direct contrast to objects identifiable by the interfaces on which they are invoked--that is, what they are obligated to consume and process if it is presented in the expected form. In the processing I do I am often the 'man in the middle', which is an unacceptable security risk in processing invoked by satisfying the expected interface, but in the internetwork topology is not only benign but is the underlying mechanism for much useful work. Instead of money managers formatting their orders--and indeed determining the substance of those orders--on the basis of what a particular broker or party executing those orders expects, they may in the internetwork topology compose those orders precisely as they themselves understand them and then publish them at an appropriate URI for retrieval by an appropriate party under http-based security mechanisms. Though the creator of an order may know of only one interested party downstream, there are in fact many who have a part in the various operations of fiduciary settlement/reporting/accounting. Rather than the creator of the order having to know of all the places where physical paper would have to go for processing in a manual system--and having to format an electronic document specifically intended for the different requirements of each of those processors--in the internetwork topology a known downstream party can delegate its authority (as effectively it does in non-automated processing) to various specialized processors. I am not only such a processor, but intervene at a number of places in the pipeline, all without most of the parties interested in a transaction even knowing of my existence. For each such process, I am not an 'intended' recipient. Out of what is published I choose what data I need on the basis of what I uniquely know to be my specific requirements for processing--and those requirements are not only opaque but are often trade secrets--but I publish my output as well-formed XML which can be used by interested parties in ways which I never expected or intended. Now as you say: > If you use the features that are eliminated from the subset, then > consumers of your documents would need to use a processor capable of > dealing with them. Is that cost really significant, and if so, please > explain? I imagine you now see that I must expect that consumers of my documents are using a processor conformant to the XML Rec. Sure, there are plenty of cases where what I produce and publish could be handled by some subset parser, but worrying about what those cases are, or worrying at all about how any one consumer of documents has to be treated differently from every other potential consumer of those same documents, obviates the essential advantage of the well-formed-XML-plus-internetwork-topology paradigm. There is also a risk on the other side, which I alluded to in the earlier post. Wherever the form in which documents are created is conditioned by agreements between a creator and its expected consumers, the risk is that they will agree on out-of-band semantics which allow them to reduce the content of the document itself. On the basis of such agreements the 'expected' creators and consumers become a cartel from which I am excluded, and their documents become impoverished of information with which I might otherwise perform useful processing. That cost is not only significant, but potentially fatal not only to what I can do today but to the larger promise of XML. Respectfully, Walter Perry
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