Re: RelaxNG examples

[Andy Bierman <ietf@andybierman.com>]

Yoshifumi Atarashi wrote:
> I think there are a few style decision points.
>
> 1) expression ability
> 2) easy to understanding
> 3) programming language/tool/library support
> 4) capability
>
> In my understanding,
> RelaxNG
> 1) good
> 2) good
> 3) not good
> 4) not good, because RelaxNG is not mainstream in XML tool developer.
>    (Our XML expert told us.)
>
> xsd
> 1) good (a little limited)
> 2) good (a little limited)
> 3) very good
> 4) good

I do not rate XSD ease-of-understanding as good.
I rate it as awful, even unacceptable.
Human factors are very important here because humans, not machines,
need to understand the data models that are being proposed and
developed for standardization in IETF WGs.

IMO, most of the humans working in the NETCONF WG do not understand XSD
well enough to throw down hill 5 feet.  This is a significant
process problem, since it is difficult to reach consensus
on complex technical details if very few people actually
understand what they are reading.

A comment was made at the data modeling meeting that W3C is now
doing development in RelaxNGc, and converting it to XSD for normative
reference in the final standard.  How clueful.  How about if we do
the same thing?  We don't care if the conversion isn't pretty.
(Nothing about XSD is pretty, so it's a non-issue. ;-)

Note that there is no guarantee that people will understand
RelaxNG either, but most people find it more readable and writable
than XSD.


Andy



> So I think we choice "xsd", for operator who can make netconf tools and
> NMS programmers.
> -------
>    Yoshifumi Atarashi
>
> Hideki Okita wrote:
> > From implementors' viewpoint,
> > RelaxNG as the schema is not a good choice.
> >
> >
> > Major development environments such as Java (Apache),
> > Visual Studio and others has no support for RelaxNG.
> >
> > Surely RelaxNG make it easy to read "directly" the NETCONF schema.
> > However, finally, it can decrease the development efficiency.
> >
> >
> > I do not object to use RelaxNG as the optional means.
> > However, XSD should remain as the default schema in NETCONF drafts.
> >
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Hideki Okita
> > Hitachi, Ltd.
> >
> >
> > References:
> >
> > RelaxNG Homepage:
> > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=relax-ng
> >
> > Apache Xerces2 Java Parser Homepage:
> > http://xerces.apache.org/xerces2-j/
> >
> >
> > Simon Leinen wrote:
> > > On the ad-hoc meeting on data modeling issues, the possibility of
> > > using RelaxNG for data modeling work was raised, and some people asked
> > > for examples.  Here are some that are somehow related to network
> > > management.
> > >
> > > The Compact RelaxNG Schema for NETCONF's protocol operations (at the
> > > time) that Rob Enns posted to the list in November 2004:
> > >
> > >   http://ops.ietf.org/lists/netconf/netconf.2004/msg00597.html
> > >
> > > The (Expired) draft-schoenw-nmrg-snmp-measure-01.txt contains a
> > > RelaxNG schema for a set of information from SNMP packet traces:
> > >
> > >  
> > > http://bgp.potaroo.net/ietf/all-ids/draft-schoenw-nrmg-snmp-measure-01.txt
> >
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>
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