Aaron has a greatpost on the realities of the standardization process with respect to XSDand RelaxNG. I think Tim Ewald’s motivationsare pure and the conclusionhe comes to is correct on its technical merits, but Aaron’s pointabout the value of industry consensus is well taken. Like it or not, we’restuck with XSD in all of its bloated, needlessly complicated glory. It may notbe perfect, but it is common.

I think the problems with XSD stem more from the standardization process itselfthan from anything else. XSD is a beast born of compromise, the result of manycompeting motivations making sacrifices to produce an end result that works butdoesn’t make anyone really happy. It’s a good example of whathappens when you try to standardize first and implement later.

I think the industry has learned some lessons, though. The standardizationapproach being taken by the WS-* specs is much different than the approachtaken by XSD. With WS-*, there are small groups of influential companiesworking together to bake these standards via real-world implementations. Thisallows them to iterate on the spec much faster and incorporate lessons learnedin the real world without taking on the organizational overhead of a largestandards body during the early phases of development. It’s a betterapproach, I think, and it seems to be working.

After blogmint:

Withthat, I’m going on vacation for a long weekend. See y’all nextweek.