On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:50:12 -0500, Elliotte Harold
<elharo@m...> wrote:

> 
 
> This is *a* data model. It is not *the* data model. There is no one XML
> data model, and there will not be. The XQuery/XPath 2.0 Data Model will
> only be the foundation for XQuery and XSLT 2. Many other developers will
> continue to profitably use other data models that better meet their
> needs. XML interoperability is based on exchanging syntax, not
> representations of data models.

OK, maybe you could back up those assertions:  Why won't there be a
single "XML" data model at some point?  I suspect one will emerge
simply because the insanity of end users having to switch back and
forth from a DOM-ish view to an XPath-ish view of namespaces and
syntax sugar is unsustainable.

And what is the *evidence* that "XML interoperability is based on
exchanging syntax"?  As I see it, lots of DOM scripts work in multiple
browsers, *all* XQuery-based integrations work off a representation of
a data model that is independent of syntax, many "binary XML" formats
are essentially serializations of the SAX event stream yet
higher-level tools don't care ....

Nobody disputes that having a canonical bits on the wire format for
XML is a Good Thing and is the interop definition of last resort.  The
disagreement is over whether that raw syntax is an appropriate
representation for real-world programmers to work with directly.  If
anything, I'd argue that only a small subset of XML consumers (as
opposed to authors) deal with it at the bits on the wire level, and
many of them (such as RSS aggregator developers?) treat it as XML-ish
tagged text rather than well-formed XML.