Schemas coming of age: use them

[DuCharme, Robert]

>> As I have mentioned in various fora including the AC meeting, xml
>> schemas are coming of age.  It is no longer appropriate for a W3C
>> activity to say "well, we won't use them because they aren't here
>> yet". They are here -- there are drafts which you can read and use.

>Is this the end of the consensual standardization process at W3C?  Can
>the people who are writing these drafts meaningfully withhold their
>approval for them, if the Director decides, one day, that the drafts
>"have come of age"?

Hey Steve, he does go on a bit more after that first paragraph. In
particular, in the second: 

  "These should be seen as the first, very important, test cases for schema:
"
  "if xml-schema language won't do what you want it to do, then get it
fixed."

I think the idea is that, if anyone's going to develop some use-cases upon
which to form judgements of the W3C's Schema language, it's not going to be
CommerceOne, ODI, or any other companies with vested interests in the other
schema proposals. (One or two Redmond companies also come to mind.) If
xml-dev people don't pound on the proposed version to figure out what we
like and what we don't, we shouldn't complain too much when it's done. 

Merely writing schemas only tests their usefulness at modeling the data in
our heads. Writing apps that use these schemas is what would be really
useful, and so far IBM's xml4j EA is the only thing out there that I know of
that allows this. I believe the most recent release supports the parts of
the September XSDL draft that are backward-compatible with XML 1.0 and some
of the data typing, although my brief tries haven't gotten the checking of
data types to work yet. I look forward to getting it to work; anyone else
geeky enough to consider such endeavors to be fun should join in. Just paste
Appendix B from Parts 1 and 2 of the WD into their own files, point at them
from a document in a validating XML editor, and go at it.

Bob DuCharme          www.snee.com/bob           <bob@  
snee.com>  "The elements be kind to thee, and make thy
spirits all of comfort!" Anthony and Cleopatra, III ii


-----Original Message-----
From: Steven R. Newcomb [mailto:srn at techno.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 1999 4:51 PM
To: timbl at w3.org
Cc: chairs at w3.org; xml-dev at ic.ac.uk; w3c-xml-plenary at w3.org
Subject: Re: Schemas coming of age: use them



[Tim Berners-Lee:]

> As I have mentioned in various fora including the AC meeting, xml
> schemas are coming of age.  It is no longer appropriate for a W3C
> activity to say "well, we won't use them because they aren't here
> yet". They are here -- there are drafts which you can read and use.

Is this the end of the consensual standardization process at W3C?  Can
the people who are writing these drafts meaningfully withhold their
approval for them, if the Director decides, one day, that the drafts
"have come of age"?

-Steve

--
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