February 2010 - dfdl-wg - lists.ogf.org

Re: [DFDL-WG] Action Item 049: Built-in specification description and schemas
by Steve Hanson 02 Feb '10

02 Feb '10

Thanks for highlighting this Suman. The reason for hiving off the properties for text numbers into a separate named annotation was reuse. It was considered that a given data format might have a large number of text number fields, but that they could be described by a far lesser number of annotations, because a limited set of 'number patterns' were used. In Suman's example that's clearly not the case, but it is an artificial one. We need to consider real world formats. I've had a look through example COBOL copybooks, and while there is a large variation in text number fields, reuse of 'number patterns' would be a benefit. For example, a set of related values might be declared the same: 15 ORIGINAL-PRICE PIC 9(013)V99. 15 DISCOUNTED-PRICE PIC 9(013)V99. 15 SALE-PRICE PIC 9(013)V99. 15 STAFF-PRICE PIC 9(013)V99. 15 TOTAL-PRICE PIC 9(013)V99. The question then becomes what is the best way to achieve this reuse. If you look at a dfdl:textNumberFormat annotation, it is the number pattern that varies. Everything else would be defined once in a dfdl:format annotation and scoped. So it does seem overkill to have a dfdl:textNumberFormat for every number pattern, because the contained properties can not be scoped and must be redeclared each time. I suggest the best reuse mechanism for this scenario is the simple type. In the above example I could declare a PRICE simple type and put the number pattern on that. I therefore agree with Suman. Remove dfdl:textNumberFormat and dfdl:defineTextNumberFormat, add all the properties to dfdl:element and dfdl:simpleType. In practice most will be set in a dfdl:format and scoped, only the number pattern will vary per element or simple type. We should also consider whether the same issue applies to dfdl:calendarFormat and dfdl:escapeScheme. For both these the reuse opportunity is high. There is likely to be just one escape scheme per data format. There is likely to be a small number of calendar formats per data format (eg, one for a date, one for a time, one for a timestamp). But in the latter case, it is typically just the calendarPattern that would vary, the rest of the properties would be set once. I suggest that whatever we adopt for text numbers we also adopt for calendars, for consistency. Regards Steve Hanson Programming Model Architect, WebSphere Message Broker, OGF DFDL WG Co-Chair, Hursley, UK, Internet: smh(a)uk.ibm.com, Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848 From: Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA To: Alan Powell/UK/IBM@IBMGB, Steve Hanson/UK/IBM@IBMGB, Mike Beckerle <mbeckerle.dfdl(a)gmail.com> Cc: dfdl-wg(a)ogf.org Date: 02/02/2010 00:21 Subject: Action Item 049: Built-in specification description and schemas I am trying to create DFDL definition for COBOL copy book and have experienced a usability issue with TextNumberFormat which have to be named and referenced from dfdl:element and dfdl:simpleType annotations. Consider a sample COBOL copy book, attached below, where I have 3 elements having PIC 9999 display clause (a.k.a zoned decimal) and 2 external (standard) decimal. They all have same length but the main difference between them is number is sign which could leading or trailing. As per the V.38 spec, I would have to create a named textNumberFormat for each of the picture clause. The key difference in the named textNumberFormats for these definitions would be numberPattern and rest of the attributes for standard decimal and zoned decimal are going to be same for a particular platform or data definition format. The generated DFDL schema will be containing many occurrences of TextNumberFormat and in the worst case scenario one for each element defined in the COBOL copy book. This is not very usable and also user would have to carefully choose the name for these formats so he can easily identify and distinguish if wants to resue them something like TextNumberStandardLength5SignLeading etc.. 01 CobolTypes. * External decimal ( Zoned decimal) 05 elem9 PIC 9999 DISPLAY. 05 elem9Signed PIC S9999 DISPLAY. 05 elem9SignedLeading PIC S9999 DISPLAY SIGN LEADING. * in DFDL - modeled as standard decimal 05 elem9SignedLeadingSeparate PIC S9999 DISPLAY SIGN LEADING SEPARATE. 05 elem9SignedTrailingSeparate PIC S9999 DISPLAY SIGN TRAILING SEPARATE. Number Format When textNumberRepresentation is ‘zoned’ only the pattern for positive numbers is used. Only the following pattern characters may be used: '+' to indicate whether the leading or trailing digit carries the overpunched sign, 'V' to indicate the location of an implied decimal point and '0' to indicate the number of digits (including overpunched). The number is '0' characters must match the number of digits in the representation otherwise it is a schema definition error. Better approach would be Add numberPattern to dfdl:element and dfdl:simpleType annotation and rest of the attributes from TextNumberFormat block to either a) dfdl:format only or (b) both dfdl:format and dfdl:element and dfdl:simpleType. Let's discuss this in the DFDL workgroup call tomorrow .. Attached below is a schema coded with the assumption (a) listed above.. <xsd:complexType name="CobolTypes"> <xsd:sequence>  <xsd:element name="elem9" dfdl:ref= "dfdlCobolFmt:CobolZonedDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="4" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="0000"> <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "0" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9Signed" dfdl:ref= "dfdlCobolFmt:CobolZonedDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="4" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="0000+" > <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9SignedLeading" dfdl:ref= "dfdlCobolFmt:CobolZonedDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="4" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="+0000"> <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9SignedLeadingSeparate" dfdl:ref="dfdlCobolFmt:CobolStandardDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="5" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="+0000;-00000" > <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9SignedTrailingSeparate" dfdl:ref="dfdlCobolFmt:CobolStandardDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="5" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="0000+;00000-"> <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> ----- Data format Definitions <xsd:defineFormat name= "CobolStandardDecimalFormat"> <xsd:format ref= "tns:BaseTextNumberStandardDecimal" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" dfdl:lengthUnits="bytes" dfdl:alignment="1" dfdl:alignmentUnits="bytes" dfdl:leadingSkipBytes="0" dfdl:trailingSkipBytes="0" /> </xsd:defineFormat> <xsd:defineFormat name="CobolZonedDecimalFormat"> <xsd:format ref= "tns:BaseTextNumberZonedDecimal" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" dfdl:lengthUnits="bytes" dfdl:alignment="1" dfdl:alignmentUnits="bytes" dfdl:leadingSkipBytes="0" dfdl:trailingSkipBytes="0" /> </xsd:defineFormat> -- Text number Formats ( added here for reference to identify applicable attributes for standard and zoned decimal) <xsd:defineTextNumberFormat name= "ZonedDecimalNumberFormat"> <xsd:textNumberFormat numberCheckPolicy= "lax" numberRoundingMode="roundUp" numberZonedSignStyle= "asciiStandard" /> </xsd:defineTextNumberFormat> <xsd:defineTextNumberFormat name= "StandardDecimalFormat"> <xsd:textNumberFormat numberGroupingSeparator="," numberDecimalSeparator="." numberExponentCharacter="E" numberCheckPolicy="lax" numberInfinityRep="\u221E" numberNanRep="\uFFFD" numberRoundingMode="roundUp" numberZeroRep="" "" /> </xsd:defineTextNumberFormat> Suman Kalia IBM Toronto Lab WMB Toolkit Architect and Development Lead WebSphere Business Integration Application Connectivity Tools http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/businessintegration/wmb.h… Tel : 905-413-3923 T/L 969-3923 Fax : 905-413-4850 T/L 969-4850 Internet ID : kalia(a)ca.ibm.com Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU

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Action Item 049: Built-in specification description and schemas
by Suman Kalia 02 Feb '10

02 Feb '10

I am trying to create DFDL definition for COBOL copy book and have experienced a usability issue with TextNumberFormat which have to be named and referenced from dfdl:element and dfdl:simpleType annotations. Consider a sample COBOL copy book, attached below, where I have 3 elements having PIC 9999 display clause (a.k.a zoned decimal) and 2 external (standard) decimal. They all have same length but the main difference between them is number is sign which could leading or trailing. As per the V.38 spec, I would have to create a named textNumberFormat for each of the picture clause. The key difference in the named textNumberFormats for these definitions would be numberPattern and rest of the attributes for standard decimal and zoned decimal are going to be same for a particular platform or data definition format. The generated DFDL schema will be containing many occurrences of TextNumberFormat and in the worst case scenario one for each element defined in the COBOL copy book. This is not very usable and also user would have to carefully choose the name for these formats so he can easily identify and distinguish if wants to resue them something like TextNumberStandardLength5SignLeading etc.. 01 CobolTypes. * External decimal ( Zoned decimal) 05 elem9 PIC 9999 DISPLAY. 05 elem9Signed PIC S9999 DISPLAY. 05 elem9SignedLeading PIC S9999 DISPLAY SIGN LEADING. * in DFDL - modeled as standard decimal 05 elem9SignedLeadingSeparate PIC S9999 DISPLAY SIGN LEADING SEPARATE. 05 elem9SignedTrailingSeparate PIC S9999 DISPLAY SIGN TRAILING SEPARATE. Number Format When textNumberRepresentation is ‘zoned’ only the pattern for positive numbers is used. Only the following pattern characters may be used: '+' to indicate whether the leading or trailing digit carries the overpunched sign, 'V' to indicate the location of an implied decimal point and '0' to indicate the number of digits (including overpunched). The number is '0' characters must match the number of digits in the representation otherwise it is a schema definition error. Better approach would be Add numberPattern to dfdl:element and dfdl:simpleType annotation and rest of the attributes from TextNumberFormat block to either a) dfdl:format only or (b) both dfdl:format and dfdl:element and dfdl:simpleType. Let's discuss this in the DFDL workgroup call tomorrow .. Attached below is a schema coded with the assumption (a) listed above.. <xsd:complexType name="CobolTypes"> <xsd:sequence>  <xsd:element name="elem9" dfdl:ref= "dfdlCobolFmt:CobolZonedDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="4" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="0000"> <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "0" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9Signed" dfdl:ref= "dfdlCobolFmt:CobolZonedDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="4" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="0000+" > <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9SignedLeading" dfdl:ref= "dfdlCobolFmt:CobolZonedDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="4" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="+0000"> <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9SignedLeadingSeparate" dfdl:ref="dfdlCobolFmt:CobolStandardDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="5" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="+0000;-00000" > <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> <xsd:element name="elem9SignedTrailingSeparate" dfdl:ref="dfdlCobolFmt:CobolStandardDecimalFormat" dfdl:length="5" dfdl:representation="text" dfdl:numberPattern="0000+;00000-"> <xsd:simpleType> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:short"> <xsd:minInclusive value= "-9999" /> <xsd:maxInclusive value= "9999" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> </xsd:element> ----- Data format Definitions <xsd:defineFormat name= "CobolStandardDecimalFormat"> <xsd:format ref= "tns:BaseTextNumberStandardDecimal" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" dfdl:lengthUnits="bytes" dfdl:alignment="1" dfdl:alignmentUnits="bytes" dfdl:leadingSkipBytes="0" dfdl:trailingSkipBytes="0" /> </xsd:defineFormat> <xsd:defineFormat name="CobolZonedDecimalFormat"> <xsd:format ref= "tns:BaseTextNumberZonedDecimal" dfdl:lengthKind="explicit" dfdl:lengthUnits="bytes" dfdl:alignment="1" dfdl:alignmentUnits="bytes" dfdl:leadingSkipBytes="0" dfdl:trailingSkipBytes="0" /> </xsd:defineFormat> -- Text number Formats ( added here for reference to identify applicable attributes for standard and zoned decimal) <xsd:defineTextNumberFormat name= "ZonedDecimalNumberFormat"> <xsd:textNumberFormat numberCheckPolicy= "lax" numberRoundingMode="roundUp" numberZonedSignStyle= "asciiStandard" /> </xsd:defineTextNumberFormat> <xsd:defineTextNumberFormat name= "StandardDecimalFormat"> <xsd:textNumberFormat numberGroupingSeparator="," numberDecimalSeparator="." numberExponentCharacter="E" numberCheckPolicy="lax" numberInfinityRep="\u221E" numberNanRep="\uFFFD" numberRoundingMode="roundUp" numberZeroRep="" "" /> </xsd:defineTextNumberFormat> Suman Kalia IBM Toronto Lab WMB Toolkit Architect and Development Lead WebSphere Business Integration Application Connectivity Tools http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/businessintegration/wmb.h… Tel : 905-413-3923 T/L 969-3923 Fax : 905-413-4850 T/L 969-4850 Internet ID : kalia(a)ca.ibm.com

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Agenda for OGF DFDL WG call 02 February 2010- 13:00 UK (8:00 ET)
by Alan Powell 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

1. Discriminators Review two options (attached) 2. Remaining 037 review issues See below 3. Go through Actions Current Actions: No Action 045 20/05 AP: Speculative Parsing 27/05: Psuedo code has been circulated. Review for next call 03/06: Comments received and will be incorporated 09/06: Progress but not discussed 17/06: Discussed briefly 24/06: No Progress 01/07: No Progress 15/07: No progress. MB not happy with the way the algorithm is documented, need to find a better way. 29/07: No Progress 05/08: No Progress. Will document behaviour as a set of rules. 12/08: No Progress ... 16/09: no progress 30/09: AP distributed proposal and others commented. Brief discussion AP to incorporate update and reissue 07/10: Updated proposal was discussed.Comments will be incorporated into the next version. 14/10: Alan to update proposal to include array scenario where minOccurs > 0 21/10: Updated proposal reviewed 28/10: Updated proposal reviewed see minutes 04/11: Discussed semantics of disciminators on arrays. MB to produce examples 11/11: Absorbing action 033 into 045. Maybe decorated discrminator kinds are needed after all. MB and SF to continue with examples. 18/11: Went through WTX implementation of example. SF to gather more documentation about WTX discriminator rules. 25/11: Further discussion. Will get more WTX documentation. Need to confirm that no changes need to Resolving Uncertainty doc. 04/11: Further discussion about arrays. 09/12: Reviewed proposed discriminator semantic. 16/12: Reviewed discriminator examples and WTX semantic. 23/12: SF to provide better description of WTX behaviour and invite B Connolley to next call 06/01:B Connolly not available. SF to provide more complete description. 13/01: Stephaine took us through a description of WTX identifiers. Mike agreed to write up in DFDL terms. 20/01: Mike will write up 27/01: further discussion of discriminators 29/01: Alan had emailed bot proposals but not enough time to discuss 049 20/05 AP Built-in specification description and schemas 03/06: not discussed 24/06: No Progress 24/06: No Progress (hope to get these from test cases) 15/07: No progress. Once available, the examples in the spec should use the dfdl:defineFormat annotations they provide. ... 14/10: no progress 21/10: Discussed the real need for this being in the specification. It seemed that the main value is it define a schema location for downloading 'known' defaults from the web. 28/10: no progress 04/11: no progress 11/11: no update 18/11: no update 25/11: Agreed to try to produce for CSV and fixed formats 04/12: no update 09/12: no update 16/12: no update 23/12: no update 06/01: no progress. If there is no resource to complete this action it can be deferred 13/01:no progress 20/01: no progress 27/01: no progress 29/01: No progress. The predefined formats do not need to be available when the spec is published. Suman said that he had been mapping COBOL structures to DFDL and it didn't look as though the way text numbers are define is very usable. He will document for next call 066 Investigate format for defining test cases 25/11:IBM to see if it is possible to publish its test case format. 04/12: no update 09/12: no update 16/12: reminded dent to project manager 23/12: SH will send another reminder. 06/01: Another reminder will be sent 13/01: no update 20/01: no update 27/01: no progress 29/01: no progress 077 SKK: mapping of COBOL numbers to textNumberFormats. A few comments in-line below On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 7:01 AM, Alan Powell <alan_powell(a)uk.ibm.com> wrote: I have answered most of the issues and comments raised by Steve and Mike but some need further discussion. Issues from Steve H General. Although dfdl:encoding enums are case insensitive, we should stick to UC throughout in examples. 2. I agree with the existing comment that the RFC2119 key words should be upper case. 14.3.4. There are type/rep combinations where lengthKind="implicit" is not allowed - so saying that 'pattern' is replaced by 'implicit' on unparsing does not work. TBD We covered this on the most recent wg call. 16.2. I'm not sure that scannability in this constant encoding sense is necessary for patterns. I can create a regular expression that extracts all characters up to hex value xXX or all characters up to xYY, thereby treating the content as an encoding in-sensitive black box. If your byte pattern happens to be a legal part of a multi-byte character sequence, then you'll get a false recognition, or you won't get what you expect. Example: You are searching for byte 0xAA, but that can legally appear as byte 3 of a 3-byte UTF-8 encoded character. When you say you are looking for hex AA in a string, DFDL is currently defined to mean you are looking for the character reprsented by that raw byte. If the encoding is UTF-8, that isn't a legal character encoding sequence even, so the decoder should cause an error or something. Even for a fixed length single byte character set, you have to have no unused code that have no mapping to ISO 10646, because our infoset is defined in terms of translations into that. I think we need encoding="none" or encoding="bytes" or something if you really want to scan bytes without encoding causing problems. Issues from Mike B · Tracker issue: codepoints outside BMP, as literals and in data. · If I put in a value that requires use of a high/low surrogate pair, is that an error, does it require me to put in two separate %#...; thingys, one for each of the surrogates (in which case these are not really code points in ISO10646). If I put in a codepoint for one of the supplemental characters and the schema itself is written in UTF-16 then that has to translate into literal surrogate pair. Ok, but I?m very uncertain about all this stuff The above item had two issues glomed together. There really are two separate issues. The above is about these crazy codepoints that use surrogate pairs. That's a minor corner case given the amount of use those get. The bigger issue is the one below, which is about things that either are in strings and are broken character encodings, but we still need to be able to process the data. There's also the matter of recovery from errors in decoding, and what we put out when the infoset contains a character code where there is no valid encoding, or just a character code which isn't even in ISO 10646 (e.g., character code 0xFFFFFFFF, which is not a valid character at all. Tracker Issue: illegal character encodings for parsing and unparsing. TBD: how do these make it into the infoset or are they replaced, and if so how TBD: can one represent these in the infoset for output? Ideally not, but? · Tracker Issue: Processing-time Schema Definition Errors This section (2.3.1 in this draft), is problematic as we?re trying to allow simple DFDL implementations to not do a bunch of static checking, yet if implementations differ on when Schema Definition errors are detected, then the second paragraph says they are converted to processing errors. This lets different implementations do very different things in terms of how the speculative parsing back-tracks around. Grammar ambiguity is a very tricky case. Unless a DFDL implementation can prove a grammar to be unambiguous, then it is very hard to say that any particular combinatino of delimiters make up a legal DFDL schema definition. If the parser simply fails because the grammar was ambiguous, there?s no way to tell the difference between this and just broken data without proving the grammar is unambiguous. In general it is formally undecidable whether a grammar is ambiguous or unambiguous. ( http://books.google.com/books?id=lIuu53IcKWoC&pg=PT217&lpg=PT217&dq=proving… ) Since DFDL v1.0 doesn?t allow recursive declarations/definitions, it may be possible to provide the ambiguity or unambiguity of a DFDL schema (or rather, the data syntax grammar described by it ? if you want to bother to distinguish the two), but recursion isn?t something we want to rule out for the future, so Type checking is decidable in DFDL?s expression language, so we could always detect type safety before run time; however, if we allow a simplistic DFDL implementation to just check types at run time then this would, by the definition in this section (2.3.1), issue processing errors when it detects these at run time, thereby allowing backtracking of the speculative parser to be driven off of type-checks in the expression language. It seems to me that we need to find a way to put this problem back into the hands of the user, and say that a schema where this actually matters (one where a type error causes a backtrack, which ultimately causes a successful parse) are illegal but implementations are allowed to not detect this particular illegality. It seems to me we need to put this problem back into the hands of the user. · Tracker Issue: "round trip" for infoset. Should we omit the whole point? · Tracker Issue: [schema] is an absolute or relative SCD. Why bother allowing absolute? · Tracker Issue: Glossary as the place for centralized definitions, or should they be repeated there, but also introduced at point of first use, or should we put the definitions only at the places where they are discussed, and xref from the glossary? · TBD: Issue - semantics of expressions containing relative paths that are inherited via ref to a dfdl:defineFormat. (also section 10.3) · TBD: Issue - XPath term - we are not consistent about using the term XPath, or "expression" when referring to our expression language. I prefer to call it our expression language, and then in the section that defines it state that it is a strict subset of XPath 2.0. · TBD: Issue - fn:position is unclear given that we've just said we don't support sequences in the expression language. · TBD: Issue - order of sections. Scoping rules section should come before variables section, which uses these concepts. TBD: Issue: Case sensitivity of enum names - did we say whether this is case sensitive or not? I believe it should be case sensitive. · Issue: dfdl:representation - Strings in binary rep. I see no reason why elements of type xs:string will examine dfdl:representation. They shouldn?t' care what it is, they are always "text". I should be able to specify a bunch of inter-mixed binary number and string elements without having to specify dfdl:representation="text' just to avoid an error on the string type elements. I believe xs:string type ignores dfdl:representation (always behaves as if dfdl:representation is 'text').(If we change this then the property precedence section for simpletypes changes slightly as representation="text" is implied if type is string.) That will make it impossible to introduce a binary representation of text later What is "a binary representation of text"? Is there a real issue here. This is a primary convenience and clarity issue for me. I do not want to have to change to representation="text" for every string inside a cobol structure, which is ultimately a binary representation object. To me type="string" is enough. I want to put in the file scope level of the schema a representation="binary", and then decorate the elements with the specifics of their types, but I do not expect to have to put representation="text" on anything. I do not understand what you are trying to achieve by requiring representation="text" for things that are already textual based on the type. The rest of the issues below I think we need to discuss on calls. textStringPadCharacter textNumberPadCharacter - did we agree that this character must be a "minimum width" character if the char set encoding is variable width? (i.e., the pad char must be 1 byte if the encoding is UTF-8. numberInfinityRep numberNanRep - Is this applicable only to xs:double and xs:float? Also, what I've seen requires a distinction of sign. I.e., there are positive and negative infinities often printing as -inf and +inf. · TBD: Issue - \n in regular expressions - clarify relationship of this to entities like NL entity. Also, if I include an entity like WSP* in a regular expression (can I?) does it then match accordingly? It appears that some of our multi-valued entities like WSP+ create conditional "matching" behavior without having to use regular expressions, e.g., when WSP+ is used as a separator. But can you use entities like WSP+ in a regular expression? It seems you should be able to use regular "single valued" entities in a regular expression, its these multi-valued ones that have tricky semantics. Added Unicode values to /n, /t,/r. Disallow DFDL entities in regular expressions. 14.1 Alignment - TBD: Issue - zero-based thinking here. But all the bits stuff and everything else in DFDL uses 1-based reasoning. Need to revisit to make this sensible for 1 based world. Added implicit alignment table. TBD zero-based finalTerminatorCanBeMissing - spec is not clear. Also is there a finalSeparatorCanBeMissing Chaned to finalDocumentTerminatorCanBeMissing and finalDocumentSeparatorCanBeMissing. Not sure where finalDocumentSeparatorCanBeMissing should be specified. Looks odd on 'distinguished root'. These properties operate differently from other properties as they are defined on the 'distinguished root' but affect some lower down element. Effectively they are put in scope by a different mechanism Regards Alan Powell Development - MQSeries, Message Broker, ESB IBM Software Group, Application and Integration Middleware Software ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IBM MP211, Hursley Park Hursley, SO21 2JN United Kingdom Phone: +44-1962-815073 e-mail: alan_powell(a)uk.ibm.com Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU

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Minutes for OGF DFDL Working Group Call, January-29-2010
by Alan Powell 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

Open Grid Forum: Data Format Description Language Working Group OGF DFDL Working Group Call, January-29-2010 Attendees Mike Beckerle (Oco) Steve Hanson (IBM) Alan Powell (IBM) Suman Kalia (IBM) Peter Lambros (IBM) Tim Kimber(IBM) Apologies Stephanie Fetzer (IBM) Steve Marting (Progeny) 1 Review Schedule The WG acknowledged that we are not going to meet the schedule to be available for public comment by OGF 28. Agreed to continue to complete the specification as soon as possible. OGF prereview is confirmed to take about 4 weeks assuming no document updates are required. We are behind schedule to be available for public review by March. Activity Schedule Who Complete Action items - 18 Dec 2009 WG Complete Spec Write up work items ? 23 Dec 2009 AP Restructure and complete specification - 23 Dec 2009 AP Issue Draft 038 23 Dec 2009 WG review WG review 7 Dec ? 08 Jan 2010 WG Incorporate review comments 4 Jan - 29 Jan 2010 AP + Issue Draft 039 15 Jan 2010 Incorporate review comments 4 Jan - 29 Jan 2010 AP + Issue Draft 040 29 Jan 2010 Initial OGF Editor Review Initial Editor review 1 Feb - 1 Mar 2010 OGF Initial GFSG review 1 Feb - 1 Mar 2010 Issue Draft 041 1 Mar 2010 OGF Public Comment period (60 days) 1 Mar - 30 Apr 2010 OGF OGF 28 Munich 15-19 March 2010 Incorporate comments Incorporate comments 28 May 2010 Issue Draft 042 28 May 2010 Final OGF Editor Review Final Editor review June 2010 OGF final GFSG review June 2010 Issue Final specification 30 June 2010 Publish proposed recommendation 1 July 2010 Grid recommendation process 1 Jan - 1 April 2011 2. Go through Actions Updated below Action 077: Suman said that he had been mapping COBOL structures to DFDL and it didn't look as though the way text numbers are define is very usable. He will document for next call. 3. TLog TLOG The individual fields are a mixture of ASCII strings, proprietary packed decimals, and the occasional pure binary data. All fields are delimited by a separator. Fields of all types can be fixed length or variable length with a maximum. Pure binary data is preceded by a field giving the actual length. All lengths in bytes. Packed decimals. Like a packed decimal in the IBM sense. These can carry negative numbers but use a leading xD sign nibble. No sign nibble if positive or unsigned. Odd number of digits (including sign if present) are padded with xF nibble. This is best illustrated using examples. 1234 => x12x34 123 => xF1x23 -1234 => xFDx12x34 -123 => xD1x23 Proposal 1) The 'variable length with a maximum' will be handled using a post-timing assertion. Note this only applies on parsing. ** 2) dfdl:lengthKind 'delimited' is permitted for numbers when dfdl:representation is 'binary' and dfdl:binaryNumberRep is 'packed' or 'bcd' because it is possible to know in advance the range of bytes being used, and therefore to choose suitable delimiters. 3) Core DFDL 1.0 will not be enhanced to handle the TLOG packed decimal type. A future version of DFDL will provide an extensibility mechanism that allows user-defined types to be handled. In the 1.0 timeframe IBM may implement its own proprietary extension to handle this type. ** While this can result in output from a DFDL unparser that can not be re-parsed, that is a problem general to the use of assertions, and a future version of DFDL may choose to change this by enhancements to the assertion annotation. 4 Action 071 Semantics of length=0, nil handling and defaults. Changed unparsing behaviour - we must honour the property - the existing behaviour of always writing the initiator means we can not successfully re-parse if writing empty content and enum is 'suppress'. When reading, assume that section 15.13 has been updated to include complex as well as simple elements. No change to enums. missingValueInitiatorPolicy Enum Valid values ?required', ?prohibited' Specifies whether to expect an initiator when an element is missing. Ignored unless dfdl:initiator is specified and is not "" (empty string). 'required' - Indicates that the dfdl:initiator followed by empty content is the required syntax to indicate that the element is missing. 'prohibited' - Indicates that empty content is the required syntax to indicate that the element is missing. The presence of an initiator implies that real content must follow. Use of ?prohibited? implies an ordered sequence. If used on an initiated element of an unordered group it is a schema definition error. If the element is required, defaulting occurs as defined above. This property also applies on unparsing, when the data to be written (after nil value and default value processing) is empty content. Annotation: dfdl:element Unparsing. The branch of a choice output when a complex element is required but missing from the infoset is the first branch of the choice that does not result in a processing error. 5. Go through Actions 6. Discriminators Not discussed) 7. Draft 037 review issues not discussed - Case of enumerations. We should follow the XSDL convention which is that enumerations are case sensitive - dfdl:lengthKind='Pattern scannability: A complex element with lengthKind=Pattern will use its dfdl:encoding property as the encoding when scanning its children irrespective of the child's encoding property. Go through unanswered issues in Mike's comments document Meeting closed, 14:10 Next call Tuesday 02 February January 2010 13:00 UK Next action: 078 Actions raised at this meeting No Action 077 SKK: mapping of COBOL numbers to textNumberFormats. Current Actions: No Action 045 20/05 AP: Speculative Parsing 27/05: Psuedo code has been circulated. Review for next call 03/06: Comments received and will be incorporated 09/06: Progress but not discussed 17/06: Discussed briefly 24/06: No Progress 01/07: No Progress 15/07: No progress. MB not happy with the way the algorithm is documented, need to find a better way. 29/07: No Progress 05/08: No Progress. Will document behaviour as a set of rules. 12/08: No Progress ... 16/09: no progress 30/09: AP distributed proposal and others commented. Brief discussion AP to incorporate update and reissue 07/10: Updated proposal was discussed.Comments will be incorporated into the next version. 14/10: Alan to update proposal to include array scenario where minOccurs > 0 21/10: Updated proposal reviewed 28/10: Updated proposal reviewed see minutes 04/11: Discussed semantics of disciminators on arrays. MB to produce examples 11/11: Absorbing action 033 into 045. Maybe decorated discrminator kinds are needed after all. MB and SF to continue with examples. 18/11: Went through WTX implementation of example. SF to gather more documentation about WTX discriminator rules. 25/11: Further discussion. Will get more WTX documentation. Need to confirm that no changes need to Resolving Uncertainty doc. 04/11: Further discussion about arrays. 09/12: Reviewed proposed discriminator semantic. 16/12: Reviewed discriminator examples and WTX semantic. 23/12: SF to provide better description of WTX behaviour and invite B Connolley to next call 06/01:B Connolly not available. SF to provide more complete description. 13/01: Stephaine took us through a description of WTX identifiers. Mike agreed to write up in DFDL terms. 20/01: Mike will write up 27/01: further discussion of discriminators 29/01: Alan had emailed bot proposals but not enough time to discuss 049 20/05 AP Built-in specification description and schemas 03/06: not discussed 24/06: No Progress 24/06: No Progress (hope to get these from test cases) 15/07: No progress. Once available, the examples in the spec should use the dfdl:defineFormat annotations they provide. ... 14/10: no progress 21/10: Discussed the real need for this being in the specification. It seemed that the main value is it define a schema location for downloading 'known' defaults from the web. 28/10: no progress 04/11: no progress 11/11: no update 18/11: no update 25/11: Agreed to try to produce for CSV and fixed formats 04/12: no update 09/12: no update 16/12: no update 23/12: no update 06/01: no progress. If there is no resource to complete this action it can be deferred 13/01:no progress 20/01: no progress 27/01: no progress 29/01: No progress. The predefined formats do not need to be available when the spec is published. Suman said that he had been mapping COBOL structures to DFDL and it didn't look as though the way text numbers are define is very usable. He will document for next call 066 Investigate format for defining test cases 25/11:IBM to see if it is possible to publish its test case format. 04/12: no update 09/12: no update 16/12: reminded dent to project manager 23/12: SH will send another reminder. 06/01: Another reminder will be sent 13/01: no update 20/01: no update 27/01: no progress 29/01: no progress 077 SKK: mapping of COBOL numbers to textNumberFormats. Closed actions No Action 064 MB/SH Request WG presentation at OGF 28 25/11: Session requested 04/12: no update 09/12: no update 16/12: SH has changed request to a general session rather tha WG in the hope of attracting more people. 23/12: no update 06/01: not heard anything yet 13/01: no update 20/01: no update 27/01: Session confirmed Closed 071 Semantics of length=0, nil handling and defaults. 23/12:SH no update 06/01: SH has started 13/01: SH proposal review. Minor updates to be made 20/01: Reviewed updated proposal. Need to agree on unparsing empty choices. 27/01: Steve H had sent update but not discussed due to lack of time 29/01: See minutes. Update 15.3 for complex. document missingValueInitiatorPolicy. Unparsing. The branch of a choice output when a complex element is required but missing from the infoset is the first branch of the choice that does not result in a processing error. Closed 074 SH: Proposal for parsing TLog 27/01: Proposal discussed and agreed to allow delimited for binary packed/bcd fields 29/01: See minutes. Confirmed delimited for packed/bcd Closed 075 SH: rewrite empty sequences section 27/01: Steve provide written section 29/01: scetion rewritten Closed 076 SH semantics of minOccurs= 0 on choice branches 29/01: Steve confirmed that XSDL allows minOccurs=0 for branches of a choice which means that the empty sequence in a valid result. WG decided that DFDL will not allow minOccurs =0 on branches of a choice. Closed Work items: No Item target version status 005 Improvements on property descriptions not started 012 Reordering the properties discussion: move representation earlier, improve flow of topics not started 036 Update dfdl schema with change properties ongoing 042 Mapping of the DFDL infoset to XDM none not required for V1 specification 069 ICU fractional seconds 039 070 Write DFDL primer 071 Write test cases. 072 it is a processing error if the number of occurrences in the data does not match the value of the expression or prefix 039 073 Rename dfdl:separatorPolicy="required" to "always". 039 Deferred until action 071 agreed 078 document UPA checks 039 079 Semantics of length=0, nil handling and defaults. (A071) 039 080 Tlog: Allow LengthKind delimited for packed/bcd (A074) 039 081 Update empty sequence section (A075) 039 082 semantics of minOccurs= 0 on choice branches (A076) 039 Regards Alan Powell Development - MQSeries, Message Broker, ESB IBM Software Group, Application and Integration Middleware Software ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IBM MP211, Hursley Park Hursley, SO21 2JN United Kingdom Phone: +44-1962-815073 e-mail: alan_powell(a)uk.ibm.com Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU

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