comment on Xpath 2.0 - no strong typing!!

Subject line says it all,  it is rather hard for me to put together
everything I would want to say here, so let me point to the Subject line
once more.

Seriously, lots of people seem to have problems with the whole
intertwining of Xpath 2.0, Xquery, XSD. It seems to me like the various
groups want to achieve some sort of synergy and they want to draw it
from the success of Xpath, not worrying that they might instead drive
people from Xpath.

I've complained other places about XSD, not here however cause I didn't
realize how harmful I felt it to be until I actually started working
with it.

Obviously if I dislike XSD I cannot feel totally happy with a technology
closely intertwined with it.
 Xpath 2.0 is such a technology,
All the various things I dislike about Xpath 2.0 can be boiled down to
the rallying cry of no strong typing! Of course if there were no strong
typing in Xpath 2.0 the integration with Xml Schema would have to be
handled altogether differently, or thrown out. 

A point about strong typing in Xpath 2.0; there is a lot of
argumentation in the programming community devoted to the superiority of
either Strong Typing or Weak Typing, Static Typing or Dynamic Typing.
Pun coming her: "Xslt is bad cause I don't like typing so much"
arguments as well.
Anyhow I was not aware that these arguments were as yet resolved in
anyone's favor.
For your information I am not a fan of Strong Typing in anything
although I find that I sometimes have to use languages that enforce
this. 
I am sure that fans of Strong Typing need to use Weakly Typed languages
at times and they resent it as much as I do the opposite, undoubtedly
they have complained very loudly regarding the lack of a type system for
XML,  but let us consider that XML rose to quite a high level of success
with no Typing to speak of. To win the strong typers over might be a
laudable goal, I think however that if you drive off the weak typers to
do it you will find yourselves with just as divided a community as
before. If there were some way to turn off typing I for one would be
happy, regarding this as a suitable compromise. 

As a reference I point you to the thread XPath/XSLT 2.0 concerns  at
http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200210/msg00014.html wherein most
respondents seem to be of the opinion that there should be no strong
typing.

Received on Thursday, 3 October 2002 05:30:19 UTC