RE: [saml-dev] Does an Authentication Context URN actually reference an XML file?

["Scott Cantor" <cantor.2@osu.edu>]

> If no one reads or uses the Authentication Context Declaration XML
> instance documents (or, as Eric says, they don't really buy you
> anything) then what's the purpose of having them?

You'd have to ask their originators. Did you think AuthenticationMethod was
useful before?

> In fact, what's the
> purpose of having a schema if there are no useful conforming instances?

I read XML schema just fine, so you'd have to ask somebody who can't. I
don't need an example instance to tell me what the class permits.

> Why not simply use a label whose semantics is clearly defined in
> English?  /Roger

You'd have to point me to something that is "clearly defined in English"...
;-)

The schema approach was chosen so that the people who deeply care about this
stuff could spend their time "productively" arguing over the relative
strength of various options and not waste time on deciding whether a given
instance matched a class. There's no ambiguity there, assuming a conforming
parser is used (and yeah, I know there probably are none).

-- Scott