Re: conformance clause + extensibility

If my implementation receives a schema-valid document containing either 
an extension or an unimplemented feature, it simply prints "not 
supported" along with explanatory details and exits. If it receives a 
non-schema-valid document, something to that effect is printed (actually 
the JAXB unmarshaller throws an exception) and the translator exits.

Sandro Hawke wrote:
> According to our specs, what should a conformant RIF consumer do when
> fed a RIF document which includes extensions it doesn't know about?
>
> My concern is that it might well ignore the extensions, trying to
> silently remove them, parsing out the bits of the document it's
> expecting to find and ignoring the rest.  That seems like a
> dangerous-yet-tempting practice.
>
> A related question is what RIF consumers should do about features they
> are required to implement but do not implement.  They can't be
> conformant, but maybe we can still give some practical guidance.  For
> instance, I think a consumer ought to give a warning or error on seeing
> such features used, instead of perhaps passing them through in some
> silent-failure mode.  Builtins might well just be treated as logic
> functions, in BLD, in which case you'd quietly get the wrong answers.)
>
>    -- Sandro
>
>   

Received on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 05:04:56 UTC