Re: Versioning of XML Schema and namespaces

At 07:37 AM 5/12/2005, Eliot Kimber wrote:
>Yow! I completely forgot about this very practical reason for not 
>versioning namespaces! This is really much more compelling than any 
>philosophical argument I could make.
>
>Mike is 100% correct--any namespace-aware processor, the most obvious 
>example being XSLTs, may have to be significantly rewritten at the detail 
>level in order to handle each new variant of the namespace for the same 
>(abstract) application.

Agreed there is some problem here, but to me it is the only solution I can 
trust to make sure we are using the proper schema. As far as XSLT why 
doesn't the include statement handle this? I also agree that this is the 
more compelling reason to avoid versioning than the philosophical stands. I 
wish the Schema WG would have answered all these problems in their design, 
they didn't so we are having to make due with what we have.

Anyway, to workaround this problem in XSLT,  can write any number of "stub" 
XSLT style sheets that are there just to define the namespace and include 
the core stylesheet that does all the work. I use the same prefix all 
across the board and just change the URL to make it work.

So far my organization has been using this approach for about 2 years and 
no one has raised and issue. A few members recently have pointed to "best 
practice" articles that raise this issue and say why aren't we doing this, 
but no one has come in and said they are having a business problem because 
of this decision.

..dan
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