[Serialization] SCHEMA-E

Technical/Editorial

[E] [Section 2: Serializing Arbitrary Data Models] This section talks about
serialization of a "arbitrary" data model but in fact will fail for some
data model instances. In addition, section 4 implicitly adds additional
constraints on the data model (by putting constraints on the serialized
form) without making it clear what those constraints are.

Suggested changes are,

- Change title of section 2 to Normalization.
- Be clearer about actual goal (in particular: to serialize to well formed
XML? to serialize to XML in such a way as to ensure 1:1 roundtrippability?
other?).
- List explicitly the conditions for successful serialization (and/or
successful serialization to Well Formed XML, and/or successful serialization
to XML which when schema-validated will produce the same data model
instance).

Section 4  (XML Output Method)  does state:
   "The xml output method outputs the data model as an XML entity that must
   satisfy the rules for either a well-formed XML document entity or a
   well-formed XML external general parsed entity, or both, unless the
   processor is unable to satisfy those rules due to either serialization
   errors or the requirements of the character expansion phase of
   serialization, as described in 3 Serialization Parameters."

It is not clear what happens when there are problems (when "the
processor is unable to satisfy those rules"): failure? output of
non-WF XML?

On behalf of the XML Schema WG.

	-- Mary
	   Holstege@mathling.com

Received on Thursday, 12 February 2004 16:14:26 UTC