Re: NEW ISSUE: use RDDL instead of XML Schema at the namespace URI?

Jonathan Marsh wrote:
> Background:
> 
> As many of you are aware, there is an ongoing debate on what kind of
> resource should be placed at the namespace URI.  The TAG has been unable
> to recommend a practice in this area, despite a lot of discussion.
> 
> The W3C, AIUI, has a policy that there should be some document at the
> namespace URI, but does not enforce a particular format.  In general
> namespace URIs seem to return HTML documents.
> 
> There are also many proponents of RDDL [1], which is simply an XHTML
> document with some machine-processable XLinks in it pointing to
> associated resources like schemas.
> 
> Justification:
> 
> One advantage of RDDL is that it would enable one to discover, through
> the namespace URI, a number of schemas for the namespace.  This is
> especially interesting when errata are taken into account.  The WS-I BP
> promulgated some fixes to the WSDL 1.1 schema, but since it is also
> desirable to have a stable document at the namespace URI, it published
> alternative dated versions with various fixes in them, and pointed to
> those dated versions from the spec.  It might have been simpler and more
> discoverable to find all the related (dated) schemas through a RDDL
> document at the namespace URI.
> 
> Proposal:
> 
> Place a RDDL document at each of the namespace URIs defined by WS-A.
> Provide a "latest schema" link as well as dated links to the schema.

Can you pl. elaborate what you mean by 'latest schema' and 'dated links 
to the schema'? Do you mean something similar to what the spec documents 
have (latest version/this version/previous version) OR do you mean that 
the links will point only to various schemas (arising out of errata 
fixes) that have the same namespaces?

For example, the 1st WD has the namespace 
http://www.w3.org/2005/02/addressing and the LC WD has a different 
namespace http://www.w3.org/2005/03/addressing. In this proposal, if I 
deref http://www.w3.org/2005/03/addressing would I get a pointer to the 
schema for the 1st WD?

Thx!

-Anish
--

> State in the document that the resources (schemas) at the dated links
> are immutable, the list of dated schemas may grow to incorporate fixes,
> and the latest schema link will always point to the latest.
> 
> A necessary related change to the specs is for sections of the specs
> which say that a schema is available "at" the namespace URI to be
> updated to say "through" the namespace URI, or some such.
> 
> Caveat:
> 
> Microsoft feels there are some benefits to this proposal to the extent
> that it doesn't take us down the rabbit hole of attempting to solve the
> general problem of what should go at a namespace URI.  We would prefer
> the status quo to spending significant amounts of time on this subject.
> 
> [1] http://www.rddl.org/
> 
>

Received on Monday, 11 April 2005 18:55:59 UTC