- From: <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com>
- Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 09:52:49 -0500
- To: "Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org, www-ws-arch@w3.org, w3c-xml-schema-ig@w3.org, w3c-xml-protocol-wg@w3.org, fallside@us.ibm.com, "C. M. Sperberg-McQueen" <cmsmcq@acm.org>
I respectfully request that this note be withdrawn, on process grounds. This is appears to be a formal statement of position by the WS-Arch group to the TAG as to where XML, SOAP and XML Schema should go. It contains a number of statements about SOAP itself that I believe to be factually in error. It also proposes moves such as normative schema subsets, which is a topic that has received much careful discussion over a 3 year period within the Schema workgroup. My concern is that, as a member of both the Schema and the XMLP workgroups I don't believe that there was any attempt by WS Arch to work with either of the WGs to check their facts or to see whether pertinent investigations had been done that should be considered. I find this particularly troubling given that WS Arch and XMLP are in the same Activity and share a CG. I hope the W3C still emphases consensus as a cornerstone of its process, and consensus can only be achieved by communication and coordination. Whether my concerns about the facts or conclusions are "correct:" is not the main point. I believe that when a workgroup formally approaches the Tag with a "conclusion" it should be done with some care, and with a real effort to first coordinate with other pertinent workgroups in the W3C. At the very least their should be a "heads up" alert in advance, giving the workgroups a chance to say: "we have something to say about this, we don't have consensus on your interpretation of our spec, etc." I think this particularly true in the case of closely related workgroups such as XMLP and WSA. I specifically do not propose to debate the technical concerns here, because my point is that this isn't the place. Some of the areas where I disagree will be clear to anyone who reads my recent contributions to the tag list. Factual concerns includes include statements such as that SOAP "punts" on defining IDs in the absence of DTDs. Not so. A normative definition is at [1]. Note in particular the constraint at [2]. The fact that it's done at the SOAP level rather than using some more general purpose mechanism is a design decision one could question, but to call it "punting" doesn't seem to be a constructive addition to the discussion. Please just reference the normative prose and state your concerns. I suggest that the Tag in coordination with the appropriate workgroup chairs and CGs clarify the appropriate process to be used in this case. If I am off base in raising these concerns, please accept my apologies. Thank you. Noah P.S. We need to decide where to continue this discussion, and I don't have any great ideas. I specifically propose that technical discussion between WSA, XMLP and Schema move off the tag list until such time as we decide how to proceed. Might I suggest that we all stay quiet for a few minutes on the technical questions until our chairs, the WS CG and/or the Tag can signal whether my concern is deemed appropriate from a process point of view, and if so how they'd like to proceed? I suppose that process responses should at least be on the Tag list unless the Tag directs otherwise, but I don't know how to avoid cross-posting and still reach those likely to be concerned. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-soap12-part2-20021219/#idattr [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/CR-soap12-part2-20021219/#uniqueidconstraints ------------------------------------------------------------------ Noah Mendelsohn Voice: 1-617-693-4036 IBM Corporation Fax: 1-617-693-8676 One Rogers Street Cambridge, MA 02142 ------------------------------------------------------------------ "Champion, Mike" <Mike.Champion@SoftwareAG-USA.com> Sent by: www-tag-request@w3.org 01/17/03 03:35 AM To: www-tag@w3.org cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org, (bcc: Noah Mendelsohn/Cambridge/IBM) Subject: The Web Services Architecture WG position on XML profiling/subset ting Categories: The Web Services architecture WG wishes to makes its position known to the TAG on issue xmlProfiles-29 " When, whither and how to profile W3C specifications in the XML Family". As you know, this issue came to your attention because SOAP (since its inception) has forbidden DTD internal subsets, external DTD references, and processing instructions. The reasons for this are very well stated in http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Dec/0119.html and. We do wish to state this working group's opinion that it is vital for the W3C to take action to formally recognize the profile of XML that is commonly used in Web services applications so as to promote the use of generic XML tools in web services applications. We strongly believe that the "muddle through" option being advocated by some on the www-tag list will set into concrete a situation that is sub-optimal at best for the Web services community and bound to foster a disconnect between the Web services and XML communities. One solution, which the SOAP community has pioneered, is to "bless" a profile of XML technologies as the foundation on which to build. In the case of SOAP, that includes a subset of XML 1.0 that allows composability of XML messages, plus the Namespaces spec, and the XML Base spec. It would be very desirable to see this profile given authoritative status by the W3C so that XML tool developers could either develop parsers, etc. that are optimized for this profile or allow the user to check conformance to the profile. This alleviates a problem today in which a SOAP message can be valid according to the SOAP 1.2 schema but be illegal with respect to the SOAP specification itself, e.g., if it contains a DTD internal subset. The current situation hinders interoperability, the reuse of generic XML tools for Web service development, and sows confusion among the users. One issue that SOAP 1.2 "punts" on (as do some other W3C specifications, including DOM Level 2 and XSLT) is the question of how an "id" attribute is defined in the absence of a DTD and without insisting on a schema processing step. Some officially sanctioned mechanism -- ID attributes in the XML namespace ("xml:id"), an ID attribute declaration mechanism suppported in the core of XML (e.g. "xml:idattr="ID"), or even an approved convention that "ID", "id" and "Id" are all to be considered ID attributes unless the ID attribute is specified by some other mechanism, seem like viable options at this point. Another issue of concern to the Web services community is xml:base. SOAP uses URIs for some identifiers including, but not limited to, values of the encodingStyle (see 5.1.1 SOAP encodingStyle Attribute) and role (see 5.2.2 SOAP role Attribute) attribute information items. SOAP does not define a base URI but relies on the mechanisms defined in the XML Base specification and [RFC 2396] for establishing a base URI against which relative URIs can be made absolute. Thus, it is important for an XML processor used to process SOAP messages to implement the xml:base specification, and this should be reflected in the WS-friendly XML profile. Additional features that would make XML more widely useful for Web services have been advocated by some members of the Web Services Architecture WG. We note that they are not supported by the same overwhelming majority of the the WG endorsing this message. For example, it would be very desirable to formalize a profile of the XML schema specification that is suitable for web services applications; it would be desireable to further enhance the composability of XML documents, e.g. by a standardized mechanism allowing an XML parser to handle files containing multiple well-formed XML fragments but without an enclosing element, and to allow multiple character encodings to be used within a single XML document. We realize that there are practical challenges preventing these features to be agreed upon quickly, and they go beyond the sentiment to NOT add any additional features in the profile discussion, and suggest merely that these be considered at some point in the future. There is currently no strong opinion within the WSA WG on how the profiles should be specified, whether in a future rev of the XML spec or an adjunct specification. The important thing to us is not the specific mechanism or even the details of a profile, but encouraging a widely-adoped convention that will allow XML tools to guarantee conformance with the profile of XML that has come into widespread use in the Web services community.
Received on Friday, 17 January 2003 09:54:12 UTC