Re: [ubl] PRD3 suggestion: sample instances with unconventional namespace prefixes

[Jon Bosak <bosak@pinax.com>]

I like Ken's suggestion.  One purpose of the xml directory is to provide a
sort of ad hoc test suite for would-be UBL apps.  If there are putative
UBL processors that choke on these examples, people need to be aware of
that.

In fact, I'd like to get these into PRD2 if possible.

Jon

G. Ken Holman wrote:
> I gather there is a public perception that the UBL committee's 
> *convention* of using namespace prefixes is somehow regarded as a 
> *standard* way of prefixing element names mandated in UBL.
> 
> Of course this is not the case, but, sadly, this is the perception.  In 
> XML any namespace can use any prefix, and at any point in an XML 
> document one of the namespaces may be associated with no prefix (called 
> the default namespace).
> 
> I feel this warrants supplementing our XML instance directory with the 
> attached four XML-equivalent instances to the 
> UBL-Invoice-2.0-Example.xml found in PRD1 and PRD2.  I say 
> "XML-equivalent" because applications should be ignoring prefixes and 
> using only the combination of namespace URI and local-name for each 
> element, regardless of any different use of namespace prefixes.
> 
> These five instances have very different uses of namespace prefixes, but 
> identical uses of URI/local-name combinations.  Every UBL application 
> should treat all five documents as having the identical processed 
> information to work on.  They all validate with the UBL schemas.
> 
> UBL-Invoice-2.0-Example.xml - (PRD1) document element in the default 
> namespace
> UBL-Invoice-2.0-Example-NS1.xml - no elements in the default namespace
> UBL-Invoice-2.0-Example-NS2.xml - basics in the default namespace
> UBL-Invoice-2.0-Example-NS3.xml - aggregates in the default namespace
> UBL-Invoice-2.0-Example-NS4.xml - embedded and overloaded use of prefixes
> 
> I have the time to add these to PRD2 if Jon hasn't yet documented the 
> revised set of sample instances, but I'm assuming we just put these in 
> PRD3.
> 
> However, an argument for *not* including such instances is that it is 
> not the role of the UBL specification to be tutorial in nature.  Yet I'm 
> confident such examples will be very useful to UBL users when they can 
> go to their application developers with a set of unconventional 
> documents that are still UBL valid and found in the UBL distribution 
> (thus giving them some legitimacy).  Their developers may think the 
> users's applications are ready for the real world, but the real world 
> has many and varied and bizarre ways that namespaces are used.
> 
> I would like to discuss this on this week's calls.
> 
> . . . . . . . . . . Ken
> 
> -- 
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