I'm sending this message on behalf of
my colleague John Arwe, co-chair of the W3C SML WG.
The W3C Service Modeling Language working
group expects to publish a second (and hopefully final!) Last Call Working
Draft "real soon now". Some reviewers from the XQuery working
group mentioned that the topic of referential integrity for sets of linked
XML documents might be of sufficient interest to these lists that it would
be worth soliciting a review. Besides, they're great beach reading
Some of the earlier articles on SML attributed
to it a somewhat different scope [1], either wider or narrower depending
upon your point of view. With that in mind, here is an outline of
the topics actually in scope for SML as currently defined:
SML - definition of concepts for a model
(a set of XML documents)
- Model validity ~ instances valid against
XML Schema documents and any associated Schematron documents
- XML instance document extensions
- - Extensible syntax for recognizing
SML references (conceptually, links) between document elements ... element
A in document 1 links to element B in document 2, etc
- XML Schema extensions
- - Constraining SML references based
on various criteria, e.g. target element, target element's type, are cycles
allowed
- - Cross-document identity constraints
(key, unique, keyref)
- - Association of Schematron rules with
global elements and global complex types
SML-IF - interchange format, adds concrete
syntax for exchanging models in cases where SML defines concepts but not
syntax
- Association of XML Schema and Schematron
documents with other model documents
- Association of 0..n URI aliases with
each model document
Review drafts and instructions for providing
comments are on the working group's page [2]. Until the new LC drafts
are available (likely mid-July), we recommend using the editor's copies
also available at [2]. [2] also has the links to the working group's
Bugzilla page, so you can see which text is still being revised (keyword:
editorial indicates conceptual agreement as indicated in the bug, just
waiting for final drafting).
The potentially substantive issues for
which we do not have final consensus as of this email (but expect to _very_
soon) are:
- base URI source http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5542
- whether or not to support barenames
in SML references http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5543
Best Regards, John Arwe (W3C SML wg co-chair)
[1] http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dailynews/200702/msg00004.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/XML/SML/