Re: ping on xpath op namespace for RIF

Hello Sandro,

My apologies for not answering you in a more timely manner. The XML Query 
WG and XSL WG will discuss this on our April 29 call. I'll provide a 
response to you after we have met.

                                                -- Andrew

--------------------
Andrew Eisenberg
IBM
4 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA  01886

andrew.eisenberg@us.ibm.com
Phone: 978-399-5158    Fax: 978-399-7012





Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> 
Sent by: public-qt-comments-request@w3.org
04/22/2008 02:18 PM

To
Michael Rys <mrys@microsoft.com>
cc
Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@redhat.com>, David Carlisle 
<davidc@nag.co.uk>, Jos de Bruijn <debruijn@inf.unibz.it>, 
"public-qt-comments@w3.org" <public-qt-comments@w3.org>, Jim Melton 
<jim.melton@acm.org>, Andrew Eisenberg/Concord/IBM@IBMUS
Subject
Re: ping on xpath op namespace for RIF








> I still believe that assigning a namespace to the XQuery/XPath op 
namespace
> is a mistake. Also, you should make an official request to the XQuery 
Work
> ing group to get this properly addressed.

I believe I did that.  The mechanism at W3C for making official requests
of Working Groups is to send e-mail to the official comments list for
the related specifications, which is how I started this discussion [1].

> You have to understand that the XQuery/XPath working group has very
> specific reasons to not expose these definitional operators

I imagine they must have, but it's not clear to me how those design
decisions (for their technologies) apply to RIF.  What harm will be done
to the Web by RIF assigning a namespace to the XQuery/XPath operations?

> and that your own spec will not be able to be implemented using a
> normal XPath engine.

This is something to explore.  I don't think we're expecting RIF
implementations to use normal XPath engines through their normal
interface (where you hand it XPath expressions), but I would hope RIF
implementations could use an underlying post-parsing XPath
implementation library.   And at that level, I wouldn't expect our
namespace decision to matter. 

But I am speaking in the abstract, based on theory.  I have never
personally worked with an XPath engine/library.  If you think it's
worthwhile, we might be able to look through some implementations [2]
and see how it goes. 

      -- Sandro

[1] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-qt-comments/2008Mar/0021.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xpath#Implementations