Stefan Tilkov's Random Stuff

Informed Opinion on XML Schema

Dare Obasanjo writes:

I used be the program manager responsible for a number of XML technologies in the .NET Framework while I was on the XML team at Microsoft. The technology I spent the most time working with was the XML Schema Definition Language (XSD). After working with XSD for about three years, I came to the conclusion that XSD has held back the proliferation and advancement of XML technologies by about two or three years. The lack of adoption of web services technologies like SOAP and WSDL on the world wide web is primarily due to the complexity of XSD. The fact that XQuery has spent over 5 years in standards committees and has evolved to become a technology too complex for the average XML developer is also primarily the fault of XSD.  This is because XSD is extremely complex and yet is rather inflexible with minimal functionality. This state of affairs is primarily due to its nature as a one size fits all technology with too many contradictory design objectives. In my opinion, the W3C XML Schema Definition language is a victim of premature standardization. The XML world needed experiment more with various XML schema languages like XDR and RELAX NG before we decided to settle down and come up with a standard.

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