Re: XML Schema usage statistics (WAS: Draft minutes of 2009-05-12 TAG weekly)

Mukul Gandhi wrote:
> I think this is good modularity. It's just that I have a difference of opinion..
>   

Having sections in a spec as sign of modularity? It is like a bad joke. 
Under that criterion, what technologies are not modular?  

The more some part of a technology is severable and has been severed, 
the more it can be called a module. 

For example, XSD 1.1 assertions could be modular. They do not effect any 
other part of the spec. They could be in a different namespace. They 
could have an independent specification with a different editor who 
never needed to confer with the Structures editor except on the 
interface points.

The structures spec could say "At this point you can put in extensions, 
and here is how extensions add their PSVI contributions." The Assertions 
spec could say "I am one of those extensions, and here are my PSVI 
contributions."  And an implementation could say "I understand that 
extension" and a user could say "I am not interested in the PSVI 
contributions from that extension, I don't need to have software that 
bothers with it." And it could be managed. I don't see any of that.

There is *one* modular part of XSD, that is the datatypes. And look at 
the fruits of that modularity: the datatypes can be used by other specs 
(ISO RELAX NG, for example uses it.)  And, I certainly agree that there 
are many sections to the spec that could be pulled out readily: 
KEY/ID/unique being the most obvious. But modularity is not primarily 
editorial.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe

Received on Friday, 22 May 2009 06:13:19 UTC