RE: chairs' summary of XML Schema User Experiences workshop

Michael wrote:

> As the old saying goes, "when you find yourself in a hole, stop
> digging." The sentiment of the XML industry as I read it is that XSD
> should be corrected via errata, clarified and explained in the Wiki,
> implemented properly with the help of the test suite, and THEN we can
> start thinking about 1.1.

As a Chair I found summarising sentiment towards XML Schema 1.1 tricky, not
least because I heard strong opinions from major vendors both for and against it.

My impression was that many in the room weren't so much /against/ XML Schema 
1.1,  but possibly not that interested in it either. However many were interested in 
exploring approaches which did not necessarily involve work within the XML 
Schema WG, or prevent the WG from continuing work on 1.1.

There was interest that the Working Group should spend more time processing
errata and test cases, but concerns were raised at which companies would actually
'put bums on seats', providing resource to continue to debug 1.0 instead of 
working on 1.1.

Speaking for myself:

I seriously wonder how XML Schema 1.1 will solve our immediate interoperability 
and versioning problems in a way that's usable in Web services we plan to 
publish in the next two or three years - especially if we're unlikely to see
implementations from all of the major vendors.

Hearing the IEEE floating point type motivation for XML Schema 1.1 
reminded of the null character motivation for XML 1.1, a standard
difficult to reference in W3C specifications, let alone deploy in services.

If XML Schema 1.1 really is backwards compatible and is not about to 
fragment the community, I'd expect it to be called 
"XML Schema 1.0 Fourth Edition".

Paul

Received on Thursday, 14 July 2005 09:31:05 UTC