Re: [xml-dev] XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns

At 2:23 PM +0200 10/4/02, Robin Berjon wrote:

>The document needs to be type-decorated, which isn't much different 
>from validated in the case of XML Schema, so yes in the normal case 
>you will have a performance hit that will most likely be higher than 
>what you gain in msot cases.
>
>In the case I am considering however, the document can only be valid 
>because it has been binary encoded using a schema, and it won't 
>encode if it ain't valid.


OK. That may make sense for you, but it seems a very weird and 
unusual use-case. If this is accurate, I don't think the cost of 
complexifying the XPath 2.0/XQuery specs with schema awareness vastly 
outweighs the benefit to strange applications that want to binary 
encode documents according to a schema.

And since I'm ccing this to the W3C comments list, let me state 
formally that I think the XPath 2.0/XQuery 2.0 should not add any 
complexity in order to support this experimental use-case. I think 
the current drafts are vastly too complex as a result of this, and 
need to be radically simplified before recommendation, probably by 
removing type-support and schema-awareness completely. The 
implementation experience does not yet exists to decided whether this 
is useful or even possible. It's better to let this stuff be 
experimented with before anybody attempts to standardize it.
-- 

+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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|          XML in a  Nutshell, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly, 2002)          |
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|  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0596002920/cafeaulaitA/  |
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Received on Friday, 4 October 2002 10:59:19 UTC