Schema Muddle (was Quite Standards Questions)

[David Megginson]

Richard Anderson writes:

 > In terms of standards, am I right or wrong in thinking that DCD
 > replaced XML_Data ?

It depends on who you talk to at Microsoft.  When I was on stage at a
major conference last Fall, I asked an MS person (whom I will not
name) about the issue in front of the whole room and received public
confirmation that XML-Data was dead, long live DCD!

The problem is that MS hasn't really gotten around to writing any
software for DCD (and probably won't), while some of their older stuff
still provides spotty support for random bits of XML-Data, so you will
sometimes hear MS people pitching XML-Data (and sometimes not).  I
suspect that there are different units within MS that don't always get
around to communicating with each other.

 > Also, is DCD being replaced by something else ? I remember reading
 > or hearing something but I cant remember what.

Yeah, DCD is just one input to the W3C's XML Schema WG (to which I do
not belong).  As an outsider, I'd guess that it is very unlikely that
either DCD or XML-Data (or SOX, or DDML née XSchema née something else
that I can't remember) will come out unmodified as the official W3C
schema format, but the ultimate solution will probably include bits
from all of them.  

Right now, use whatever you feel like, but don't let yourself be duped
by any vendors (big or small) into thinking that their pet format will
have a shelf life of more than a year or so.  In other words, feel
free to experiment, but don't build a $10M system around anything
right now.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
           http://www.megginson.com/

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