[OASIS Issue Tracker] Commented: (CMIS-10) ReconsiderelementFormDefault="qualified"

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    [ http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/CMIS-10?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=10117#action_10117 ] 

Florent Guillaume commented on CMIS-10:
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It must be stressed that the fact that an element is qualified does *not* mean that it has to have a prefix. The qualification can be implicit based on a default namespace in an enclosing element.

Basically qualified elements never have ambiguous namespaces, but unqualified ones may be ambiguous in the absence of a schema. (At least that's how I understand the XML specs.)

Note also that the issue of elementFormDefault="unqualified" only matters for elements that are local, i.e., not declared as toplevel types in the XSD (global types are always qualified by the targetNamespace of the schema). And the schema could be written using only global names, and using ref="..." in complex types to avoid the problem entirely.


> Reconsider elementFormDefault="qualified"
> -----------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CMIS-10
>                 URL: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/CMIS-10
>             Project: OASIS Content Management Interoperability Services TC
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: Domain Model
>    Affects Versions: Draft 0.50
>            Reporter: Gary Gershon
>            Priority: Minor
>             Fix For: Draft 0.52
>
>
> The Draft 0.50 schemas specify elementFormDefault="qualified" which results in prefixing of XML elements with a namespace identifier.  
> Thus our messages would have a format similar to <cmis:ElementName> instead of simply <ElementName>.  
> Some tools do not allow the user to specify "pretty" prefixes like "cmis", so the actual qualified XML might look like <bons7:ElementName> where bons7 (business-object-namespace-7) was earlier mapped to our CMIS domain namespace via a xmlns:bons7="..." attribute.
> This adds complexity and bulk to authoring and reading XML messages and I am unaware of any substantive benefit.
> Major vendor XML tooling create schemas that leave the elements unqualified without observable negative impact.
> A "Best Practices" site for XML (http://www.xfront.com/HideVersusExpose.html) recommends leaving elements unqualified "when simplicity, readability, and understandability of instance documents is of utmost importance".
> Unless there is a compelling argument for using "qualified" elements, I think the group should should similarly favor "simplicity, readability, and understandability" for our XML messages and allow this schema specifier to default to "unqualified".
> Could one of the participants from the original draft group provide some insight on the basis for this earlier decision?

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