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At 01:03 PM 7/6/2002 -0400, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>I agree, but I do believe that XML should be able to express datatypes - 
>and a lot of people seem to agree, including the designers of RELAX-NG and 
>most other recent schema languages. I would like to be able to support 
>these datatypes efficiently.

I don't find support for those datatypes compelling for XML.  I find them 
to be a distraction from the text-based functionality that makes XML so 
useful at best, a distressing calamity at worst.  I'm starting to argue 
that compromise even with the primitive types is a dangerous mistake.

>Are you asking us to drop support for types entirely? If so, is that 
>because you want all processing to be done by converting XML into Java or 
>relational data first, or because you think processing data does not 
>require types? Or are you suggesting a different strategy for supporting 
>types in XQuery? If the latter, could you please explain what approaches 
>you favor?

I'm saying that:
* XML has a type system - it's called element types.
* Applications are welcome to build whatever processing they want on that 
foundation
* The "XML Core" should not recognize any type systems beyond those in XML 1.0.

Too minimalist for many? Probably.  Layering solutions rather than piling 
type systems into the core would take care of a lot of my 
objections.  Sadly, XQuery seems intent on building on XML+WXS, not XML.

Simon St.Laurent
"Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue


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