RE: ping on xpath op namespace for RIF

> What harm will be done to the Web by RIF assigning a namespace to 
> the XQuery/XPath operations?

The same harm that arises in any system if an interface that was designed to
be internal to a subsystem is promoted to a public global interface without
examining the consequences. For example, the user of this interface will
have a different expectation about the stability of the interface from its
supplier, and that will inevitably lead to tensions as the specs evolve.

One of the technical issues is that the specification of these internal
functions makes many assumptions about the calling environment, for example
with respect to things such as type promotion of operands. Because the
specifications were written with one particular calling environment in mind,
these assumptions might not be clearly exposed.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/

Received on Tuesday, 22 April 2008 19:31:45 UTC