Namespaces are dead.

[Jonathan Borden]

Ouch!!

Why ought namespaces be dead? Is Biztalk that important? Just don't use
Biztalk or the XML Data namespace if you don't want it, this is a free WWW!

---------
> Both BizTalk and the recent XML Schema draft use the namespace identifier
as the
> schema identifier.

...

> In other words, namespaces are dead (for database documents) as ways of
uniquely
> naming elements independent of any other considerations. They are now
"name-in-a-particular-schema-in-a-particular-schema-language--spaces".

	Not always. You can always use a "urn:" based namespace URI to prevent
linking the namespace to a schema.

>
> Congratulations to all concerned.
>
> The practical question is now what to do? Should we just lay down and die;
should
> we go back to architectural forms; should we invent a parallel namespace
PI that is
> concerned with uniquely identifying names and not with tieing elements to
a schema?

> The first thing that is required is for W3C to create a Schema PI, in a
similar
> fashion to the Stylesheet PI. In the absense of that mechanism, the
Devourers can
> excuse themselves that there is nothing else to use for invoking schemas
apart from
> namespaces.

	Agreed. This is an easier to understand, more flexible solution which is
more akin to the present mechanism of associating a DTD to a document than
the proposed linkage to the namespace URI.

	One issue to consider, however, is the impact of either mechanism of
schema/namespace association on how a document containing elements from
multiple namespaces ought be validated.

---------

Jonathan Borden
http://jabr.ne.mediaone.net



xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)