I think there are a range of topics you could consider, depending where your
interests lie. Some points on the spectrum:
 
(a) theoretical questions e.g. concerning the equivalence of grammar-based
and predicate-based constraints. Not particularly my interest so I don't
really know what's going on here.
 
(b) engineering questions concerned with the construction of efficient
schema validators. E.g. evaluation of multiple assertions in parallel. There
are a lot of interesting things to explore here, but I'm never quite sure
where the boundary lies between research and plain development. (I do far
more innovative work as a product developer in this area than I ever did for
my PhD!)
 
(c) information systems design methodology questions concerned with the role
of data validation in systems design and the contribution it makes to data
quality, or with the methodology for designing schemas for a family of
related messages supporting a business process.
 
A personal gripe of mine is that there is far too much computer science
research that tries to invent new ways of doing things, and far too little
that attempts to discover which existing techniques actually work
effectively in practice. It's as if we were always trying to invent new
drugs to cure obscure diseases, and never took the trouble to research which
existing drugs are the most effective.
 
There are some topics - schema versioning and evolution come to mind - where
there is a real problem waiting to be solved, but where the problem is so
hard that it seems unfair to suggest that a student should attempt to make
progress in this area. 
 
Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/


  _____  

From: xmlschema-dev-request@w... [mailto:xmlschema-dev-request@w...] On
Behalf Of some one
Sent: 30 April 2009 17:13
To: xmlschema-dev@w...
Subject: need advice


Hello friends,

 I am interesting to do my PhD research in the field XML schema. I want to
know if this filed still active research area so I can do my PhD research in
it and what is the current trends in this research filed. Also if I can know
some names for leader professors in this filed.  I will be grateful for your
advice and direction. 

Thank you.
Jubran