[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Getting specs/standards right (was UPA and schema handling
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:46:00 +0100, Michael Kay <michael.h.kay@n...> wrote: > XQuery is not a big language. It is arguably smaller than XSLT 1.0. If > vendors produce implementations that don't conform, this will probably be > because they are trying to do things like translating the language into SQL, > which is never going to work 100%. There's no good reason at all for native > implementations to leave features out Translating the language into SQL is exactly what I was thinking about in the "effectively implemented in which types of software" line. It's the distribution of needs across the real world of actual users, not within a working group, that ultimately determines which features are important. For example, XML 1.0 was clearly designed by document people and there may be no good reason for document-oriented applications to not implement all of it. For better or worse, however, XML has gotten the most actual usage for data and message exchange, and some of XML 1.0's features have proven to be highly burdensome for those use cases. Something similar could happen with XQuery, we shall just have to see. It would be great if the investment in time needed to get XQuery to Recommendation status does really lead to a spec with the quality that there is nothing worth leaving out. It would be a something of a first for W3C, -- or any consensus-driven process -- so I'm reserving judgment. My point about "XML-I" is that I'd like to see the judgment on which features in a spec are truly needed in which scenarios ultimately made by users and implementers. The web services community has determined from experience that a number of the features in the SOAP spec add more complexity than they're worth, so they were removed from the WS-I interoperability profile, irrespective of the thoughtful work that went into the original specs. If it turns out that the XQuery spec does strike a near-optimum balance between the needs of its diverse audience, it will have been worth the wait!
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