One of the more critical areas we need to decide is "elements vs.
attributes". Gunther's position paper is here (he's going to update it soon):
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ubl/ndrsc/pos/draft-stuhec-elemvsattrib-01.doc
Here are a few unorganized thoughts to get the discussion going; everyone,
please respond with your thoughts, and I'll try to formulate votable
questions as we go:
I think the analysis in this paper about advantages and disadvantages of
attributes is mostly on target (I have a few quibbles that I'll try to
write up soon). I'd like to see the advantages and disadvantages of
elements described fully in similar fashion.
I wonder, though, if the draft proposal in this paper favors attributes too
heavily. With the advent of XSD, there is little you can do in attributes
that you can't do in elements -- even default values can be assigned to
elements that have a simple type. And even the code list case (which seems
like an obvious candidate for attributes because it often uses a closed set
of values) isn't crystal clear, because we know we need to add all kinds of
metadata and mechanisms to code lists to make them work.
Finally, I wonder if this paper can be expanded to explore the question of
empty elements too. This topic came up in the F2F last week (are empty
elements "leaf nodes"? should they be used only as "attribute hangers" or
also as presence/absence boolean indicators? how should we name them?
should we allow them at all?).
Eve
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Eve Maler +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems XML Technology Center eve.maler @ sun.com