[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]

  • From: David.Brownell@E... (David Brownell)
  • To: xml-dev@i...
  • Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 10:45:31 -0700

Versioning of APIs is in general a problem that few platforms claim
to have solved.  I think SAX is basically OK, since the January version
wasn't to be the "1.0" release.  The classic strategy is:

    - APIs in development can have incompatible changes.
	(SAX to date has been in development.)
    - Once they are "final", all changes must be compatible.
	(From now on ... )

For Java, see chapter 13 of the Java Language Specification:

    http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/html/13.doc.html

That doesn't address the JDK 1.2 package versioning work, but it does
give some background that may be useful for non-Java systems.

It also doesn't address the compatibility with respect to serialized
objects; a parser API should have no need to worry about that stuff
though!  I like the idea of never using serialization; instead, it's
safer to use Externalization, since developers must explicitly think
about such data interfaces.  (Hmm, data interfaces ... "XML"?  ;-)

- Dave


xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i...
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)


Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member