RE: XML Schema patterns for databinding

A small rant ...

While some uses of XML will be to marshal program data structures  
between applications, in the business world this is not the issue.  
The issue is to capture the structure and semantics of business data  
such that these can be communicated unambiguously. This is the  
objective of UBL, HL7, etc.

Possibly I'm missing something but I don't see what this has to do  
with transmitting a collection from one program to another. I thought  
the objective of web services was to decouple program data structure  
implementation from service document schema.

It might be more useful for this WG to study how XML Schema could  
more simply and directly capture the business document design being  
done by the various vertical market orgs that are trying to apply it.  
I hope these org's are not thinking in terms of 'collections,  
vectors,  maps and graphs' as their design primitives.

-- Mark

> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: FYI: XML Schema patterns for databinding
> Resent-Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 20:42:40 +0000
> Resent-From: www-ws@w3.org
> Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 16:42:34 -0400
> From: Philippe Le Hegaret <plh@w3.org>
> Organization: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
> To: www-ws@w3.org
>
> Following on the XML Schema 1.0 User Experiences and Interoperability
> Workshop [1], we are currently working on a draft Working Group
> Charter proposal for new work on XML Schema patterns for databinding.
> This Working Group would develop a set of patterns for common data
> structures of XML Schema for the purpose of simplifying the mapping of
> XML Schemas into programming language structures.
>
> We propose to accomplish the work in two phases:
>
>  (1) during the first phase, the group would target data structures
> that can be represented and preserved with XML Schema 1.0, such as
> collections, vectors, or maps, and that would not required the use of
> XML Schema annotations in order to preserve them. We expect this first
> phase to be relatively short, restricting itself to "today's state of
> the art".
>
>  (2) depending on the success of the first phase, during the second
> phase, the group would use XML Schema annotations to address more
> advanced data structures. Consider the example of graphs: an XML   
> Schema
> document should include XML Schema annotations to indicate that  
> the  data
> structure is a graph and should be preserved as such when   
> represented in
> a programming language.
>
> This group should also look at the issue of versioning, especially
> during the second phase; however this should be done in light of the
> discussion being held in the Technical Architecture Group, the XML
> Schema Working Group, and the Web Services Description Working Group.
> The primary audience for those patterns are WSDL authors who would   
> like
> to provide XML Schemas that can be converted in a consistent manner
> across various programming languages, thus this work must be
> language-independent.
>
> We anticipate that this Working Group would be part of the Web   
> Services
> Activity. While Web Services toolkits are expected to provide full
> support of the XML Schema 1.0 specification, having a set of   
> patterns to
> use would help the user experience when dealing with Web Services
> toolkits that map XML Schemas into existing programming languages.
>
> Comments and suggestions are welcome on this list,
>
> Philippe

Received on Thursday, 28 July 2005 02:56:10 UTC