Re: Inputs and outputs

Norman Walsh wrote:
> / Alex Milowski <alex@milowski.org> was heard to say:
> | Actually, we could make it like XPath by adding our own axes for
> | steps, inputs, outputs and whatever else we want:
> 
> We could. But I really hope we don't have to go that far. All we need
> is a slightly funky compound IDREF.
> 

My thinking was that, in general, we need a way to refer to:

    * inputs
    * outputs
    * parameters
    * steps

While particular steps only *need* to refer to outputs of other steps,
tool technologies will need full ability to address into the pipeline.

Experience has shown that having a common mechanism with which to
address the full abstract model is something that both users and
vendors eventually want.  If we end up using a "slash" for a
separator, it would be unfortunate if we couldn't map it to an
XPath kind of construct.

Keep in mind that XML Schema already has such a construct that is
coming out for addressing into the component model:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-ref/

--Alex Milowski

Received on Friday, 21 July 2006 14:03:57 UTC