Re: [regrep] FW: Namespace management

[Matthew MacKenzie <matt@mac-kenzie.net>]

David,

See inline.  I see you are flogging the 
CAM-redefines-XML-namespace-and-XML-Schema idea.

:-)

>I stressed the above to show how this is different.  I guess I
>never bought into the premise from the W3C that
>you HAD to have a unique prefix on your XML, else
>it would not "work".   I find this flawed, and further more
>users react badly when asked to add prefixes to tags,
>and mapping software reacts even worse when asked
>to manage and move content so labelled.
>

Whoa!  Are we debating the use of namespaces here?  We were discussing a 
"registry of namespaces", and certainly not a registry of namespace 
prefixes, and even more certainly we were not discussing the 
apropriateness of XML namespaces.

The idea that every bit of XML is a member of a namespace is A Good 
Thing.  And if "mapping" software has a problem dealing with properly 
namespaced XML, perhaps those mapping software vendors ought to make use 
of one of the 15+ open source XML parsers, that can handle namespaces.  
Hell, a few years ago I wrote a XML parser using regular expressions 
that dealt with namespaces.  Its not hard.  I'd like to know why you 
think namespaces are flawed.

>
>Here's how the adaptive approach works instead - and 
>I'll talk about real world parallel in live systems to
>illustrate this too.
>
>A registry server is identified to a federation server, 
>and within your local context (an assembly) it is 
>assigned an alias (some short character sequence)
>with an associated physical address to the interface
>to that registry.
>
>Now I use that alias as a prefix to a UID value, to
>identify the reference I need as a content cross-reference
>within my CAM template.
>\
>
How is this illustration any different from: xmlns:foo="urn:foo", 
<foo:element />?   

>Now of course - I do not care that someone else is
>using the exact same alias for some other registry
>in their CAM document elsewhere.
>
As in XML, I don't care if someone else is using xmlns:31337="urn:foo".  
It still resolves to urn:foo.

>
>This could only be a potential issue if another
>assembly document included into it both mine
>and the other assembly.  But even then - using the
>include as a prefix - negates the collisions.
>
>The power of this system is that anyone can 
>call any <tagsoup> item whatever they need to
>in their local context and usage, but denote it
>in the content reference:
><thisworks>
>   <mine>
>       <city/>
>   </mine>
>   <his>
>      <city/>
>   </his>
>   <yours>
>      <city/>
>   </yours>
></thisworks>
>
>and then
>
><contentreferences>
>   <registry alias="mine" address="http://foobar.com/port:1000"/>
>   <registry alias="yours" address="http://somebar.com/port:9000"/>
>   <content name='//mine/city' reference="mine:UID010001"/>
>   <content name='//his/city' reference="mine:UID078901"/>
>   <content name='//yours/city' reference="yours:UID055501"/>
></contentreferences>
>
>Bottom line is this simple and clean means makes the CAM
>system a breeze when including content from multiple sub-assemblies.
>Essentially you never need to worry about collisions in the underlying
>content fragments - because you can always resolve references.
>
>Of course by doing this we remove the need for namespace police,
>and even the need to create complex mechanisms in our ebXML
>Registry implementations to support the namespace police.
>  
>
This looks more convoluted than a namespace based solution.

-Matt


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