Re: [mile] What is Version (5070bis, enum, etc.)

[Eric Burger <[e-mail]>]

5070, 5070bis, and ENUM all use a 'version' attribute. 

Section 3.1 of both 5070 and 5070bis define version as:
     Required.  STRING.  The IODEF specification version number to
     which this IODEF document conforms.  The value of this attribute
     MUST be "1.00"

OK, I will bite. The schema of 5070 and 5070bis are different. How do I know I have a 5070bis schema if it says <IODEF-Document version="1.00">? It is totally non-normative, but I suppose someone who is clueless about protocols would look at the double super secret <documentation> tag that says "Incident Object Description Exchange Format v1.00, see RFC 5070" for a 5070 document and "Incident Object Description Exchange Format v1.10, RFC5070-bis" for a 5070bis document. I say "double super secret" because that string only appears in the schema but has no text describing it. Also, making a programatic decision based on XML Schema documentation is not a very smart idea.

Let me push this further. What happens if a 5070bis document has <IODEF-Document version="1.10">? 5070 and 5070bis both say… nothing. However, a good protocol writer will see the 'MUST be "1.00"' and thus will reject the document. Is this the desired behavior? If so, say so. I doubt it, but we are begging for interoperability failure if IODEF becomes successful and we enhance it in the future.

Enum reference format suffers from this as well, but I will address that in a separate email.