Re: Xml Schema profile

Last year, the W3C organized a workshop, hosted at Oracle, addressing
this issue (among others).  

The chairs' summary of the workshop is at
http://www.w3.org/2005/06/21-schema-workshop/chairs-report.html

It contains pointers to the agenda, and the minutes of both days of the
workshop (including pictures).
Most major software vendors attended this meeting.  The original subject
of the workshop was raised by WSI:  "what to do about XML Schema
Profiling."

I think the minutes and the chairs' summaries give a fair indication of
industry consensus, at least in May 2005.  I don't know that much has
changed since that point.  My personal take-away from the workshop was
that many participants thought a profile might be useful, but gaining
consensus on what it might actually be seemed a daunting task.  (N.B.
XML Schema itself is an attempt to "profile" what most people want.)

The W3C response was to create a "databinding WG" in the Web Services
Activity that is addressing these concerns.  They do their work in
public space, and I know they are eager for input from concerned folks,
so I strongly recommend that you take a look at their accomplishments so
far:
http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/databinding/

This group really is concerned with interoperability of XML languages
defined in XML Schema.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
David Ezell