Production Rule for SOAP-ENC:arrayType

Here is the production rule specified by the current draft for arrayType
[1],

"    arrayTypeValue  =  atype asize
     atype  =  QName *( rank )
     rank  =  "[" *( "," ) "]"
     asize  =  "[" #length "]"
     length  =  1*DIGIT"

Questions, issues and requests,

(a) spec appears to use ABNF [2] for specifying this production rule. Are
there any special reasons for choosing this notation. If not, for
consistency, may I request you to use the notation used by the XML 1.0 spec?

In the notation that is used in XML 1.0 -

arrayTypeValue    ::= atype asize
atype             ::= QName rank*
rank              ::= '[' (',')* ']'
asize             ::= '[' length? ']'
length            ::=  nextDimension* Digit+
nextDimension     ::=  Digit+ ','

QName (see XML Namespaces 1.0) [3]
Digit (see XML 1.0) [4]

(b) what does '#length' represent? And, how does it capture the format for
multi-dimensional array, such as - enc:arrayType="xs:string[2,3]" - example
34 in [5]

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12/#_Toc478383513
[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2234.txt
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/#NT-QName
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#NT-Digit
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/soap12/#_Toc478383522

Regards,

Asir S Vedamuthu

webMethods, Inc.
703-460-2513 or asirv@webmethods.com
http://www.webmethods.com/