Re: [apps-discuss] review of draft-ietf-ecrit-lost-sync-12

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

Robert Sparks asked me to think about the namespaces issue...

> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: 	Re: review of
> draft-ietf-ecrit-lost-sync-12 Date: 	Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:17:10 +0200 
> From: 	Hannes Tschofenig <[e-mail]> To: 	"Martin J.
> Dürst" <[e-mail]> CC: 	Hannes Tschofenig
> <[e-mail]>, Henning Schulzrinne 
> <[e-mail]>, Marc Linsner <[e-mail]>,
> Robert Sparks <[e-mail]>, "[e-mail]" 
> <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
> 
> 
>> From Martin:
> 
>> Namespaces: It is overkill to define new namespaces for each spec.
>> It's a well-known secret in the XML community that it's easily
>> possible to add a number of new elements to an existing namespace.
>> This would be very appropriate in this case, because the number of
>> reused elements and attributes is quite large, and the number of
>> new elements is low. This would simplify most of the examples.
> 
> I guess you refer to the namespace registration in the IANA
> consideration section, namely urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:lostsync1
> 
> In the RAI area we have (to my knowledge) always created new
> namespaces for new schemas. But I am pleased to hear that this is not
> needed.
> 
> Could you explain what we should be doing instead?

I don't see a problem with defining a new namespace for each iteration
of an XML format (lostsync1, lostsync2, etc.), because I don't think
there's a general case here -- backward compatibility can depend on the
community of interest. One community might be doing strict schema
checking, so that any new elements or attributes would be problematic.
By contrast, another community might be more lax in its processing
because they specify that applications must ignore unknown elements and
attributes, even those qualified by an existing namespace.

Just my centigram of silver. :)

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/