ASBIE semantics annotations (was Re: [ubl-lcsc] Re: Position Paperon List Containers)

["Eve L. Maler" <eve.maler@sun.com>]

I admit I haven't been following the list container discussion carefully 
of late, but I wanted to comment on one side-item in case it has any 
importance:

Anthony B. Coates wrote:
...
> Just for "reference".  To explain what I mean by that, in an XML Schema, when
> you define a global element, you use <element name="..." ...>...</element>. 
> You can have an annotation inside this, describing the element from a global
> perspective.  If it is a <Tax> element, you might describe something about tax.
> When you want to use your global element definition somewhere, you write
> <element ref="..." ...>...</element>.  Usually there is nothing between the
> open and closing tags, but according to the XML Schema spec, you can also have
> an annotation here.  This is the "reference" case I was talking about.  It
> allows you to annotate an occurrence of <Tax> inside <Federal> differently to
> an occurrence of <Tax> inside <State>.  My point was that annotation of
> references is not widely used, and not well supported by tools (some of which
> normalise those annotations back to the <element name=...> definition,
> unhelpfully).

Don't our global elements have multiple uses necessitating multiple 
references in different content models with different shades of meaning? 
  This corresponds to the association BIE concept -- a "flavor" of an 
aggregate BIE reflecting its use within a higher-level aggregate BIE. 
My recommendation, quite a while back, was that we put the ASBIE 
semantics in the <element ref=> annotations and the original ABIE 
semantics in the <element name=> annotations...  It would be a shame if 
this weren't possible with current tools, since otherwise those shades 
of meaning have nowhere sensible to go.

	Eve
-- 
Eve Maler                                        +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems                            cell +1 781 354 9441
Web Products, Technologies, and Standards    eve.maler @ sun.com
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