RE: [xacml-users] AttributeSelector usage

["Daniel Engovatov" <dengovatov@bea.com>]

>Basically, it's a shame that you need to write a new function that acts

>just like AttributeSelector for any new datatype you invent that is 
>represented by mixed content in a DOM tree. On this point I agree.

But I think you missed my point - XPath 1.0 does not return you a DOM
tree - it returns a node-set defined on an abstract tree model
(http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath#data-model) with only non-normative mapping
to XML infoset.   XPath 2.0 data model will be better defined - and even
more different.

This content will also have no type.  I think it is a strong part of
XACML that everything that comes out of context and into processing has
strict type.  

Importing this mess into our standard, for no reason other then
extensibility would be unwise, in my opinion.

You also do not need to write a new function for each data type - write
one that computes a path expression and returns a node-set (or Boolean,
number or string, as XPath 1.0 can return) and add data-type "node-set".
But then it will be your responsibility to define what it really means
and how it is type-checked.

Daniel;