D-AG0010: Use XML

This message kicks off discussion on goal 10, use of XML (affectionately
known as XML world domination ;-).  Please comment on goal wording, success
factors.

The goal as stated
"D-AG0010
uses W3C XML technologies in the development of the web services
architecture to the extent that this is compatible with the overall goals
listed here"

Discussion:
-----------
I think this should be

"uses XML.". I can live with "is XML based"

1. The word "technologies" does not add value to the simple goal of uses
XML.  I don't see "uses XML technologies" being better than "uses XML".
2. The words "in the development of the web services architecture" is
redundant.  We don't need to put this in every goal.
3. The words "to the extent that this is compatible with the overall goals
listed here" is redundant.  Each and every goal is met wrt to other goals.
We could use these words with every other goal.

4. What are "XML technologies" or what is "XML"?  Is this XML
element/attribute, XML Infoset, XML 1.0 + namespaces, XPath 1.0 data model,
any work that has an XML Schema?   This is undefined.  I think we should
leave it as such, or we should ask another group.  Perhaps the XML CG, the
XML Core WG, or the TAG may have a definition for what "XML", "XML Based",
"XML Technologies" means.

Other issues:
-------------
5. Is this redundant with D-AG0009: alignment with Web architecture?
Certainly the web architecture has tendencies that a goal is for all formats
to be XML based.
6. Should we separate the outputs of the Working Group (the reference
architecture document) from the implementations of web services?  Sample
wording might be "uses XML for Web Services vocabularies".

To forestall a rathole, it is inappropriate to talk about under what cases
this goal cannot be met.  The goal should not say anything like "uses XML
element/attribute syntax except where humans are authoring the documents"
(ala Xquery) or "uses XML except for performance reasons" (the binary
attachments/compression argument).

Critical success factors
------------------------
Each new architectural area is representable in a syntactic schema language
like XML Schema.  I stress the "syntactic" adjective to schema language
because the TAG has occasionally ratholed into HTML and RDF documents being
"schema" languages.

Cheers,
Dave

Received on Monday, 11 March 2002 18:40:05 UTC