[OASIS Issue Tracker] Created: (ODATA-348) Require the use of <edmx:Include> to pull in specific namespaces from <edmx:Reference>

[OASIS Issues Tracker <workgroup_mailer@lists.oasis-open.org>]

Require the use of <edmx:Include> to pull in specific namespaces from <edmx:Reference>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                 Key: ODATA-348
                 URL: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/ODATA-348
             Project: OASIS Open Data Protocol (OData) TC
          Issue Type: Bug
          Components: OData CSDL
    Affects Versions: V4.0_WD01
         Environment: [Proposed]
            Reporter: Michael Pizzo
             Fix For: V4.0_WD01


<edmx:Reference> allows a service's metadata document to reference external metadata descriptions in a distributed environment. This allows a large, potentially complex schema to be factored into reasonable sized chunks.

In such an environment, one metadata document may reference multiple external metadata documents, and clients can lazily fetch metadata as required. However, today there is no way for a client to know which of possibly multiple references it needs to follow in order to resolve a particular namespace.

If we were to require that the service explicitly specify the namespaces to be included from each reference, that would allow a client that is lazily exploring metadata to know which references it needs to follow in order to get additional metadata. This also gives us the ability to include a subset of the namespaces in a referenced document.

This is also a convenient place to apply an alias to the namespace, which makes more sense than applying it in a <using> statement within the <schema> since the alias, in order to be valid in a url or a response, must be global which is strange for a declaration within a <schema> element.

For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<edmx:Edmx xmlns:edmx="http://docs.oasis-open.org/odata/ns/edmx";
           Version="4.0">
  <edmx:Reference Url="http://odata.org/ann/a";>
    <edmx:Include Namespace="org.example.validation" Alias="validation"/>
    <edmx:Include Namespace="org.example.display" Alias="display" /> 
  </edmx:Reference>
  <edmx:Reference Url="http://odata.org/ann/b";>
    <edmx:Include Namespace="org.foo.* "/>
  </edmx:Reference>
  <edmx:DataServices ...>
</edmx:Edmx>


-- 
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
-
If you think it was sent incorrectly contact one of the administrators: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/secure/Administrators.jspa
-
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira