Removing use of "-" in element and type names

[Chin Chee-Kai <cheekai@softml.net>]

Is it possible for NDR to rule for removing the use of hyphens
"-" in element and type names?

A bit of trial experience with transforming UBL schema element
names and types to Java classes revealed that the existence
of hyphens in element names and types introduces programming
decisions to "deal with" the hyphens.  

As you know, hyphens are not acceptable as variable or type 
names in Java (or for that matter, C, Perl and most programming
languages) though they are fine as XML names.  During the
transformation, developer will need to make a decision of
how to map the hyphens into the programming language's 
name space.  For e.g., map "-" to nothing (squeezing the
hyphens out), map "-" to underscore "_", or mapping it to
some other infrequently used string combinations.

For instance, "CountrySub-Entity" may be mapped in various
ways into:
   CountrySubEntity
   CountrySub_Entity
   CountrySub_____Entity
   ...

There aren't too many names with hyphens, fortunately.
However, these create exceptions that will require documentation.
Such requirement will not be necessary if NDR could rule to
not use hyphens.

Thanks.



Best Regards,
Chin Chee-Kai
SoftML
Tel: +65-6820-2979
Fax: +65-6743-7875
Email: cheekai@SoftML.Net
http://SoftML.Net/