Fw: NEW ISSUE: use RDDL instead of XML Schema at the namespace URI?

[Tom Maguire <tmaguire@us.ibm.com>]

Interesting issue has been raised in WSA WG that may be applicable to us as
well.  See below.

Tom

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when
there is nothing left to take away.   – Antoine de Saint-Exupery


T o m   M a g u i r e


STSM, On Demand Architecture


Poughkeepsie, NY  12601
----- Forwarded by Tom Maguire/Hawthorne/IBM on 04/08/2005 08:35 AM -----

public-ws-addressing-request@w3.org wrote on 04/07/2005 07:34:15 PM:

>
> Background:
>
> As many of you are aware, there is an ongoing debate on what kind of
> resource should be placed at the namespace URI.  The TAG has been unable
> to recommend a practice in this area, despite a lot of discussion.
>
> The W3C, AIUI, has a policy that there should be some document at the
> namespace URI, but does not enforce a particular format.  In general
> namespace URIs seem to return HTML documents.
>
> There are also many proponents of RDDL [1], which is simply an XHTML
> document with some machine-processable XLinks in it pointing to
> associated resources like schemas.
>
> Justification:
>
> One advantage of RDDL is that it would enable one to discover, through
> the namespace URI, a number of schemas for the namespace.  This is
> especially interesting when errata are taken into account.  The WS-I BP
> promulgated some fixes to the WSDL 1.1 schema, but since it is also
> desirable to have a stable document at the namespace URI, it published
> alternative dated versions with various fixes in them, and pointed to
> those dated versions from the spec.  It might have been simpler and more
> discoverable to find all the related (dated) schemas through a RDDL
> document at the namespace URI.
>
> Proposal:
>
> Place a RDDL document at each of the namespace URIs defined by WS-A.
> Provide a "latest schema" link as well as dated links to the schema.
> State in the document that the resources (schemas) at the dated links
> are immutable, the list of dated schemas may grow to incorporate fixes,
> and the latest schema link will always point to the latest.
>
> A necessary related change to the specs is for sections of the specs
> which say that a schema is available "at" the namespace URI to be
> updated to say "through" the namespace URI, or some such.
>
> Caveat:
>
> Microsoft feels there are some benefits to this proposal to the extent
> that it doesn't take us down the rabbit hole of attempting to solve the
> general problem of what should go at a namespace URI.  We would prefer
> the status quo to spending significant amounts of time on this subject.
>
> [1] http://www.rddl.org/
>
>