Proposed Namespace URI Versioning Policy

["Scott Cantor" <cantor.2@osu.edu>]

My suggested text follows. In addition to the CD vs CS question, the final
bullet in the OASIS template listing "backward-compatible" changes seemed
wrong to me.

If their terminology is that backward-compatible means "new instances will
validate against the old schema", then changing element cardinality means
that the change shouldn't result in new valid documents that would have been
illegal before.

Personally, I consider that "forward-compatibility", in the sense that the
old schema and code is forward-compatible with new stuff. But I left their
terms, I just fixed the item.

-- Scott
 
It is the intent of the OASIS XRI Technical Committee that the Extensible
Resource Descriptor namespace URI will not change arbitrarily with each
subsequent revision of the corresponding XML Schema document but rather
change only when a subsequent revision, published in conjunction with a
Committee Specification, results in backwardly-incompatible changes from a
previously published Committee Specification.

While it is also the intent that backwardly-incompatible changes will not
occur between Committee Drafts, the Technical Committee reserves the right
to make such changes without changing the namespace URI. In such cases,
consultation with the implementation community will be sought before doing
so, but the final decision rests with the TC's voting members.

Under this policy, the following are examples of backwards-compatible
changes that would not result in assignment of a new namespace URI:

    * addition of new global element, attribute, complexType and simpleType
definitions
    * addition of new elements or attributes in locations covered by a
previously specified wildcard
    * modifications to the pattern facet of a type definition for which the
value-space of the previous definition remains valid or for which the
value-space of the preponderance of instances would remain valid
    * modifications to the cardinality of attributes or elements for which
the value-space of possible instance documents conformant to the new
revision of the schema would still be valid with regards to the original
cardinality rule