Michael Champion wrote:
> The data binding / object serialization problems are more complex, but
> again not exactly paradoxical.  The root of the problems is that XSD
> has a much richer (and admittedly more bizarre) type system than the
> programming languages in wide use today.  People have been rather
> creative in mapping XSD constructs to CLR and JVM constructs, and
> these creative mappings don't interoperate very well.  The solution
> here is much less clear and there is (IMHO, not necessarily MS's)
> probably a lot of experimentation left to do before standardization is
> appropriate.

I'm not convinced that a lot more experimentation is necessary -- data 
binding products have been around since shortly after XML 1.0, so it 
seems that there ought to be a wealth of experience out there.

The lack of standardization is undoubtedly one of the major 
interoperability problems. Although JAXB attempted to standardize the 
mapping between XSD to objects, it isn't (as far as I know) implemented 
in any products other than JAXB itself. The result is a lot of variation 
in mappings among data binding products, especially in what XSD features 
are supported.

-- Ron