Thanks Michael,

About the justification you are mentioning: that is exactly what our standard is about: allowing companies (but also the FDA) to add extra elements and attributes in a separate namespace.

The whole discussion is a trigger for us to move to XML-Schema 1.1 earlier than we envisaged. Problem here is that, except for Saxon, there do seem not to be very much tools (editors, libraries, etc.) that allow validation of XML files against XML-Schema 1.1.
Is there a list somewhere of tools that do so, or a list of vendors and when they intend to have Schema-1.1 validation ready ?

I will make a separate mailing with some comments/remarks/suggestions about escalation of issues, certification mechanisms, etc..

Jozef Aerts
XML4Pharma
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Kay 
  To: 'XMLSchema at XML4Pharma' ; xmlschema-dev@w... 
  Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 12:53 AM
  Subject: RE: Escalation mechanism for different interpretation of W3C XML-Schema specification ?


  Just for the record (though it only really confirms the point that there are differing interpretations), I implemented the XSD 1.0 specification without the benefit of knowing anything about the intent of the WG beyond what was written in the spec, and I came to the conclusion that there was only one way of interpreting the rule about xsd:redefine being "pervasive". But then I also came to the conclusion that other parts of the schema composition rules had to be treated as loose statements of intent which didn't cover all contingencies.

  I would certainly advise against using xs:redefine in an industry schema specification. Its only possible justification in my view is to define a variant of a schema produced by a third party. And for that use case, I think it only works unambiguously if that schema uses a single target namespace throughout.

  Michael Kay
  Saxonica

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From: xmlschema-dev-request@w... [mailto:xmlschema-dev-request@w...] On Behalf Of XMLSchema at XML4Pharma
    Sent: 29 September 2009 12:24
    To: xmlschema-dev@w...
    Subject: Escalation mechanism for different interpretation of W3C XML-Schema specification ?


    We, the CDISC XML-Tech Governance Team (and other CDISC teams) have developed a number of extensible standards for exchange of clinical data and for submitting information to the regulatory authorities (FDA).

    CDISC is a Standardization Organization active in the healthcare world.

    Our extension mechanism is based on the "import" and "redefine" elements of XML-Schema.

    We now have a serious dispute with one technology vendor (Altova) about the way "import" and "redefine" are used. Instance files of one of our extensions (so-called "define.xml") validate well in all major validators and XML-editors, except for the products of this one vendor.

    When confronted with this result, the reaction of Altova essentially is that "Altova is right, all others are wrong". The dispute and discussion with Altova can be followed at:
    http://www.altova.com/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1000005665

    The issue were not so serious if it were not that our standard "define.xml" is a standard for submission of information to the regulatory authorities, and these are (mostly) using the Altova product for validation.

    We now want to escalate the issue to the W3C itself, and would like to know what the mechanism is to do so.

    Jozef Aerts
    CDISC XML-Tech Governance Team