All this buisiness about namespace URNs...

[Daneker, Vincent]

I can see that collisions may occur if attempting to piece together a
document (archive) from other documents (archives), each potentially using
the same  tags for different purposes. There seem to ways to avoid the
difficulties.

One way would be to continue to use a commonly agreed format for general
consumption. Today XML -> HTML is used to allow general access. This doesn't
really allow people to use XML to its full potential.

So, the development of XML aware applications seems to be a logical step.
Currently, IE5 can display raw XML, which isn't particularly appealing, but
it can be done. Will Excel or Access in Office 2000 (or tools by any other
company, MS is just an example, please don't flame me) allow direct and
sensible import of an XML file into their formats? In this case
well-formedness is more important than specific tag sets and while the
latter can cause trouble it should be relatively easy to overcome. At the
very least any puzzling entries it would highlight the difficulties we're
speaking about.

The blind exchange of data in e-commerce could open a can of worms. However,
if I'm engaged in a commercial venture, then I'm going to ensure that you,
our valued customer, have everything you need from us to complete your
transaction. This means that I'd include something like the <LINK rel="">
element and have that indicate an existing resource that would give the DTD
and another for a style sheet. The assumption here is that your connection
to us will understand all of that. Hopefully, the XML aware applications
will do so.

Finally, if engaged in direct EDI, then the partners would either have to be
working to a pre-existing standard (not to open that debate again :-)) or
would have to agree to one so that the EDI would work. Here is where
namespaces would be useful. Alternatively, the partners could come up with
their own new set of elements and DTD and map their marked-up information to
the new set. I'd suggest that communities of common interest will work out
some modus vivendi that may indeed be a namespace.

I certainly hope that I haven't completely misunderstood the debate. Please,
let me know if I have.

regards, Vincent

P.S. this is being sent from outlook. It should go out as text/plain, if,
however, it arrives as one of those stupid little envelope attachments,
please let me know and I'll fix it. Thanks.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	David Megginson [SMTP:david at megginson.com]
> Sent:	Wednesday, June 02, 1999 8:08 PM
> To:	xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
> Subject:	All this buisiness about namespace URNs...
> 
> Kent Sievers writes:
> 
>  > 2) Are we really that worried about collisions?  After all, don't
>  >    I usually know (and approve)  with whom I am exchanging data?
> 
> Not really, especially if you count HTTP transactions as "exchanging
> data", and in the future, I expect that things will get even more
> complicated: e-commerce, in particular, pretty much requires an
> ability for blind information exchange.
> 
> 
> All the best,
> 
> 
> David
> 
> -- 
> David Megginson                 david at megginson.com
>            http://www.megginson.com/
> 
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