[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The <any/> element: bane of security or savior of versioni
Here is my solution to many of the issues raised in this long thread: One way to describe the main problem is to say that there's no good way to write a schema for a language that might be extended in the future (in fairly arbitrary ways). We want to write programs that process the language as it stands today, but we hope those don't break as the language changes. We want to define schema that, when inputs pass, assure us our programs will do something sensible. Yet, these same schema, if they are to handle future formats, must be so open-ended (e.g., through "any" elements) that they can make only fairly weak promises. In practice, it is observed that the use of open-ended schema leads to serious numbers of systems failures in million-line systems. Too late for those systems already failing but the solution is to impose a discipline of language versioning. Let's suppose we have a schema that (today) *strictly* defines a language X (no "any" foo - no handling of future updates). Tomorrow, someone invents the similarly strict language Y and we all realize "X should become Y!". To make Y the next version of X, we should be obligated to define two transforms: one that converts X to Y, the other for Y to X. So, the solution is that programs shouldn't simply check inputs against a schema, if they want an extensible input language. Rather, programs should first transform inputs to a familiar type, then check those, and optionally transform outputs to some externally requested type. With that basic rule, one can begin to define very clean ways to handle "unrecognized -- from some future version" fields. Also, the XML structure of a language is made orthogonal to the versioning of the language: different versions can have completely different strict schema. -t http://www.dasht-exp-1a.com
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