comments and questions

[Franck Delahaye <franck.delahaye@akazi.com>]

Hi,

I am Franck Delahaye from AKAZI. (www.akazi.com),
we are a french company and we developp "flowMind": a workflow product.

In the new release of our product (next september),
We have to provide our customers for an XML workflow process definition
language, that will replace the current propietary language syntax (FMP).
We have chosen UML to define the language semantics "FM-UML" and TREX to
define and validate the XML syntax, called "FM-XML".
Using FM-XML users will be abble to import, load and export an FM-UML
worflow process definition.

I' have made a first FM-XML.trex prototype, using James Clark's sample
patterns and validator.
 with such a prototype I can validate 70% what I need to validate.
 what is left for 100% of the syntax validation is:
	define and validate FM-UML relations in FM-XML:
		I think that the cross-reference pattern of "relax ng" seems ok for that.
	validate XPath typed attributes:
		several attributes of FM-XML should contain an XPath expression (just like
the "select" attribute of XSLT templates)
	validate Java typed attributes:
		several attributes of FM-XML should contain a subset of Java expressions.
I'd like to know:
	 if my problem is in the scope of RELAX NG, or if I took a wrong way ?
	 if there will be a public alpha version of a RELAX NG validator, and if
James Clark's TREX validator will become a RELAX NG validator ?
	 if you think it is too early to prototype RELAX NG validation process,
regarding it's actual status ?
	 if it is planned to support validation of XPath expression ?

Anyway, I encourage the RELAX NG initiative, and by the prototype I've done
it seems clear that such a solution is easy to set up for people having
basic knowledge of XML and regular expressions, (knowledge of DTD is a plus
also).

What  would be a great thing is to provide some kind of accompagnying
"validation component interfacing standard" to be abble to build easely a
"multi language" validator starting from TREX, Java, VB.. validation
component. But this may be not realistic...

regards,

 Franck.
 email: franck.delahaye@akazi.com