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RE: defining xml diff/changes in xml : XUpdate etc

• To: "'Rakshan Murthy'" <rakshanm@h...>,<andrew.townley@b...>
• Subject: RE: defining xml diff/changes in xml : XUpdate etc
• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>
• Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 21:58:37 +0100
• Cc: <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <BAY108-F32B8817B6D1A1330B58CD5CECC0@p...>
• Thread-index: AcZc2xz0PqQGwCpYSYaIm4XrCjx1YAABFXpA

All of this seems to be a bit short of requirements statements and use
cases. I would have thought that different requirements would prompt
different designs. For example:

* must the effect of applying diffs be independent of the order in which
they are applied?

* how important is it to merge two diff files that relate to the same source
to create a merged diff file; and if so, how important is it to be able to
detect and/or resolve conflicts?

* is it ever necessary to apply a diff file D that was defined against a
base file B to a slightly different base file B'? If so, what kind of
differences between B and B' should be tolerated?

* do diff files need to be human-readable?

* do diff files need to be small?

* what kind of changes need to be diff'ed? Do they include, for example,
renaming of nodes? Do they include any bulk changes, such as deleting all
instances of a particular attribute? Do they include changes at the lexical
level, e.g. changing the expansion text of an internal entity? Do they
include DTD changes?

* are there any assumptions about schema validity of the source and/or
target documents?

* are any operations applied to diff files other than (a) applying a diff
file to a base document, (b) merging two diff files?

* What exactly is the real requirement behind the statement that the diff
files must be XML?

Perhaps this is all covered by some kind of unstated assumption "we want it
to work like UNIX diff". But if that were the case, you could use UNIX diff.


Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rakshan Murthy [mailto:rakshanm@h...] 
> Sent: 10 April 2006 21:13
> To: andrew.townley@b...; mike@s...
> Cc: xml-dev@l...
> Subject: RE:  defining xml diff/changes in xml : XUpdate etc
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >From: "Andrew S. Townley" <andrew.townley@b...>
> >To: Michael Kay <mike@s...>
> >CC: 'Rakshan Murthy' <rakshanm@h...>, xml-dev@l...
> >Subject: RE:  defining xml diff/changes in xml : XUpdate etc
> >Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:38:14 +0100
> >
> >
> >You may have also seen this (courtesy of Sam Ruby's blog) 
> last week.  I
> >only saw it on Friday, but it seems to at least be active and doing
> >something similar.  Maybe you can work with Andy Roberts on it to try
> >and get the features you need.
> >
> >http://andyroberts007.blogspot.com/2006/04/delta-web_03.html
> >
> >ast
> 
> Thanks,
> I found this wiki, and they seem to be looking for the same thing as I
> http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Projects/CJANXmlDiff
> 
> They point towards Diffxml and its output DUL(Delta Update 
> Language) which I 
> was also considering as an alternative.
> 
> I also found that DUL was submitted as a draft by its author to IETF
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mouat-xml-patch-00.txt
> 
> rax
> 
> >
> >On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 12:37, Michael Kay wrote:
> > > I'm not sure you had a response to this.
> > >
> > > XUpdate is pretty dormant. It certainly can't be 
> described as a standard 
> >in
> > > any sense of the word, though it might still do what you want.
> > >
> > > XQuery update extensions are on the way, but not there 
> yet. And it's not 
> >an
> > > XML format, unfortunately.
> > >
> > > Have you considered representing the diffs as an XSLT 
> stylesheet that 
> >does
> > > the transformation from old to new?
> > >
> > > Michael Kay
> > > http://www.saxonica.com/
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Rakshan Murthy [mailto:rakshanm@h...]
> > > > Sent: 05 April 2006 21:01
> > > > To: xml-dev@l...
> > > > Subject:  defining xml diff/changes in xml : 
> XUpdate etc
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > Im looking for a standard for defining xml diffs/changes in
> > > > an xml format
> > > > (which may be used for patching later).
> > > > I've looked at Xupdate, and its quite close to what im 
> looking for.
> > > > http://xmldb-org.sourceforge.net/xupdate/xupdate-wd.html
> > > >
> > > > however, im concerned if this is a "standard", or is 
> widely popular.
> > > > What makes me queasy is that their domain site
> > > > http://www.xmldb.org, is no
> > > > longer theirs (or doesnt seem to be).
> > > >
> > > > If anyone has experience with xml diffs and can point me to a
> > > > relatively
> > > > stable standard, your help is appreciated.
> > > > The icing would be a OSS api that diffs xmls and generates
> > > > this standard.
> > > >
> > > > thanks,
> > > >
> > > > regards,
> > > > rax
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > 
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    • From: "Rakshan Murthy" <rakshanm@h...>

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