Re: XML Schema usage statistics

Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com> writes:

> Searching Google code for .xsd files (http://www.google.ca/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=file%3A.*%5C.xsd%24) finds 44,800 files.
>
> Searching Google code for .rng files (http://www.google.ca/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=file%3A.*%5C.rng%24) finds only 3,000 files.

Well, by that metric, DTDs are still almost as popular as XSDs:

http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=file%3A.*\.dtd%24&sbtn=Search
finds 40,300 files.

> Not necessarily a reliable survey but it certainly indicates that in
> publicly visible code stores indexed by "Google code" .xsd file
> occurrence is significantly greater than that of Relax NG files.
>
> Personal opinion: I expect that the ratio in enterprise systems
> whose code stores are not visible to a tool like "Google code" that
> this ratio would be even more slanted towards XML Schema.

You're almost certainly correct. For those (common and important!)
users who view a schema as a way of describing a typed object graph
for use in their applications, XSD is clearly a useful answer.

It's just a shame that the WG was determined from the very beginning
to conflate that goal with the goal of designing a schema language for
more traditional documents.

I joined the Schema WG rather late (because of the then-enforced
constraints of only one primary and one secondary member, as much as
anything else) and quickly realized there was very little I could
contribute as I just didn't care about describing the constraints
needed to do automated code generation for exchanging datagrams.

C'est la vie.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

-- 
Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> | It is important to realize that any
http://nwalsh.com/            | lock can be picked with a big enough
                              | hammer.