RE: Clark's commentary

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-tag-request@w3.org
> [mailto:www-tag-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of
> Norman Walsh
> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 11:55 AM
> To: www-tag@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Clark's commentary
>
>
> / "David Orchard" <dorchard@bea.com> was heard to say:
> | Here we get into the excellent discussion of what features
> are being used.
> | Sorry Norm, but your iotas don't quite match my iotas.  Which isn't
> | surprising though ;-)
>
<snip/>

> | A nice facet of xml (2.0 = 1.0 - DTDs - PIs + namespaces +
> infoset + xml
> | base) is that I think it more closely mimics standard
> practice, for example
> | SOAP 1.2.
>
> SOAP 1.2 standard practice is hardly standard practice for XML!
>

You have misinterpreted what I said.  I didn't say soap 1.2 is standard
practice.  I said there is a standard practice (the now oft-repeated
profile) that is used by soap 1.2.

> | This is an excellent example of architectural refactoring
> that often happens
> | in software.  SOAP 1.2 had to invent the equivalent of XML
> 2.0 for what it
> | needed.  Now it turns out that other people could use the
> same definitions.
> | So let's refactor the XML 2.0 stuff into a coherent piece,
> then SOAP WG
> | doesn't have to document it/maintain it.  And other specs
> can use it rather
> | than copying the verbage from soap 1.2.
>
> I'm horrified by this prospect! The use of XML in SOAP has to be the
> definition of a narrow, application-specific vocabulary with little or
> no broad applicability beyond RPC.
>
> To base the underlying standard for an entire, wide-ranging, highly
> adaptable, diverse web of applications on that single use case would
> be foolhardy at best. IMHO, of course. :-)
>

The smiley face doesn't take away from the blatant misinterpretation.  Use
of namespaces, xml schema, infoset, xml base is not SOAP specific.  These
are W3C approved recommendations.  I don't know why you would be horrified
of standardizing a profile that includes W3C recommendations etc.   There
are many many specs that use xml 1.0 + namespaces - pis, and I expect many
more to use infoset, xml base and xml schema.  For example, the xml files
that deployers use to deploy Java applications in our server product use
namespaces, schema, no dtds, no pis.

We have an opportunity to provide for cleaner re-use of something that is
common.  That's one of the tasks that architects do, they find commonalities
and refactor things.

The very fact that others (like James Clark) have talked about a similar
subset also shows it's not a single use case.

Cheers,
Dave

Received on Monday, 7 January 2002 16:13:23 UTC