Re: XML Schema usage statistics (WAS: Draft minutes of 2009-05-12 TAG weekly)

Mukul Gandhi wrote:
> On the surface, I feel having something like XSD Lite from W3C would
> cofuse much, the existing XSD community. I suggest, that let's have
> XSD 1.1 as a REC in it's current form.
>   
Yes, I agree that reducing confusion is an important goal! Not the 
extent of banning XSD
entirely though. :-)
> But suggesting that XSD 1.1 should be stopped from coming in it's
> current form, even on the basis of your arguments, IMHO denies the
> necessary benifits which existing XSD 1.0 should get.
>   
Why should we take the requirements of the stakeholders currently 
well-served by XSD as any kind
of  priority, when it seems that they have, consistently over the 
current decade, ignored or marginalized
(what I suggest are) the needs of us majority for a profile?  It would 
take a fair amount of chutzpah
to expect much sympathy for "but *we* need this" after years of saying 
"we don't care what *you* need,
we don't agree you need it,  and even if you do or we did, you should do 
it somewhere else"!

(Of course, I am saying it too baldly and without the varnish it needs, 
but I hope you understand
my point.)
> You could see the evolution of XSLT 1.0 to XSLT 2.0 or XPath 1.0 to
> XPath 2.0. I feel, XSD users get a similar kind of value if they have
> XSD 1.1.
>   
I don't see the connection. Instead of nice layers and modules (XPath2 
DM, XPath2 lang,
XPath2 functions,  XSLT2, etc) with a major increase in functionality, 
XSD 1.1 is monolithic
and still full of arcana. But I think that adopting XSD 1.1 now would 
positively impede progress
on an XSD Lite and Tite. 

Value for XSD users is indeed important. But, as XML and HTML proved, 
there is an enormous
value in simplicity. Which is why it would be great to prevent the value 
gains being lop-sided in
favour of the status quo.

> To summarize my views.. I see nothing architecturally wrong in
> enhacing XSD 1.0 to XSD 1.1 (in it's current form..).
>   
The problem is not with what is in XSD 1.1. The problem is that XSD 1.1 
perpetuates a
larger problem: it is a local optimization that diverts attention away 
from the global suboptimality.
It would be laudable if it had not taken resources away from the more 
important problem.
Doing nothing to address the giantism, it becomes itself a symptom of it.

XML Schemas is like using a Swiss Army knife to cook with. Most Asian 
kitchens get by with
a handful of simple tools: chopsticks, hatchet, a good knife, perhaps 
even a spoon. But the logic
of  the XSD WG is "Oh, the French need to make quenelles, we must have a 
quenelling spoon
as a grave matter of Internationalization because it is not our business 
to judge what people need...
as long it is more stuff."    So XSD 1.1 welds another Swiss Army knife 
onto the existing one,
so that no kitchen should suffer without a quenelling spoon. .

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

Received on Thursday, 21 May 2009 11:50:01 UTC