>>> ...
>>> I believe that with XPATH 2.0 future transformations (XSLT, SAX, DOM) will
>>> take advantage of "type matching" instead of "element matching". In other
>>> words - our style of transformation will change to a style, where element
>>> names do not matter.
We should "do the right thing" in representing UBL documents
for businesses. "The right thing" could be in terms of minimizing
impact on migration of existing messaging systems, ease of
evolution of future UBL data types and documet types,
simplicity, or many other dimensions that give positive impacts.
>>> Remember that we have to
>>>
>>> I suggest that the NDR SC considers the following questions:
>>> 1. Which is more important:
>>> a) Easy transformation but inconsistent naming of elements right
>>now,
>>> and easy transformation (based on type) and inconsistent naming later.
>>> B) Difficult transformation and consistent naming right now, and
>>easy
>>> transformation (based on type) and consistent naming later.
Good points. That's one way to look at it, but I presume from
your discussion that the "easy" and "difficult" adjectives are
based on using solely XPath technology.
There were a number of trial transformations of XML document sets
we did involving about a thousand nodes. Not exceptionally large,
but the XPath versions took very very long time to do even a simple
search, although the expressions looked compact. We're forced
to re-program the expressions with some other means to take advantage
of certain boundary conditions that cannot be represented by
XPath expressions.
The point here is that design phase issues, which are what NDR
is discussing, can be sensitive to practical considerations,
but need not be bound by one particular way of doing things,
if certain recommendations fulfill the "do-the-right-thing"
objectives.
>>> It may very well be the case, that when UBL "takes off" - XPATH 2.0 will
>>be
>>> a reality and that we may regret a choice of Global element declarations.
We can afford to regret later than to regret now, can we?
Best Regards,
Chin Chee-Kai
SoftML
Tel: +65-6820-2979
Fax: +65-6743-7875
Email: cheekai@SoftML.Net
http://SoftML.Net/