Disagreement with Component Designators basic assumption

Hello all. 8-)

I disagree with the basic assumption of Component Designators draft [1]
that there is a need to designate all different logical components of a
schema with URIs (as opposed to components being defined in a schema
document for which XPath or XPointer should suffice).

In XML Schema itself, components are designated with their names
(expanded name - with the namespace) and the symbol space where the name
should be looked for is known from the context. Why is it that other
uses need more insight into a schema than XML Schema itself? In XML
Schema, if an element declaration needs to be pointed to, it is defined
on the top level. Why is there a need to designate an anonymous type
definition, for example?

I think the basic question is whether or not two symbols with the same
name and in the same namespace are related. 

For example a complex type and an element {http://example.org/}date,
which I will from now on write as the qname ns:date. In my opinion the
two are related. In RDF/XML (one of the usecases for component
designators) the URI form of the qname above would be
http://example.org/date, a simple concatenation of the namespace name
and the local part.

My position is that if something is being said about ns:date, it either
only pertains to one component type (e.g. the supertype name on ns:date
simple type or the substitution group of ns:date element), or it
shouldn't matter which it is (e.g. the publisher of the definitions).

If we accept the current way of thinking represented in the Component
Designators draft, we will end up with great number of possible URIs
representing a single expanded name: XML Schema Component Designators,
WSDL component designators and more for every language and symbol space
for symbols named with an expanded name.

To simplify all (at no cost to generality, IMO) we should accept and
promote the idea that one expanded name means one thing (with possibly
many aspects). If two things are being defined, they ought to be named
differently.

I propose we stick to the RDF/XML way of turning an expanded name into a
URI by concatenation.

If this position was previously discussed and dismissed, please point me
to the discussions if possible. 8-)

                   Jacek Kopecky

                   Senior Architect, Systinet Corporation
                   http://www.systinet.com/

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-xmlschema-ref-20030109/

Received on Tuesday, 14 January 2003 04:40:56 UTC