July 2018 - dfdl-wg - lists.ogf.org

Clarification needed: 14.2.2 Parsing Sequence Groups with Separators - Rep(N)
by Mike Beckerle 01 Aug '18

01 Aug '18

In 14.2.2 the phrase: * Rep(M)* means M occurrences of nil, empty, normal or absent representation. These are optional occurrences so default rules do not apply for empty representations. Begs the question of what happens if the empty representation is not the same as absent representation due to initiators and/or terminators being required by emptyValueDelimiterPolicy. If the empty representation is found, what would a Parser do? These are optional, so defaulting is not applicable. Treat it as "absent" is one possibility, Treat it as "normal" which is likely to result in a parse error, is another. Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | www.tresys.com Please note: Contributions to the DFDL Workgroup's email discussions are subject to the OGF Intellectual Property Policy <http://www.ogf.org/About/abt_policies.php>

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Clarification: empty sequence - how can it be non-zero content length
by Mike Beckerle 01 Aug '18

01 Aug '18

Section 14.1 states: It is a processing error if the SequenceContent region of an empty sequence has non-zero length when parsing. How is it possible for an empty sequence to have a non-zero length of its content region? I understand it could have delimiters outside the content region, and other framing possibly, but the content region has nothing in it then only annotations can appear. Annotations can be property definitions or can be DFDL statements. None of those can consume representation bits when parsing, or produce representation when unparsing. So I believe this processing error cannot happen. If I am correct, the statement about processing error should be dropped. Also, clearly this statement does not apply to a sequence that carries a dfdl:hiddenGroupRef, since the hidden group can contribute to the content region. I would not consider a sequence carrying hiddenGroupRef to be empty unless the referenced group is also empty. Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | www.tresys.com Please note: Contributions to the DFDL Workgroup's email discussions are subject to the OGF Intellectual Property Policy <http://www.ogf.org/About/abt_policies.php>

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typographical - fn:string(...) should be xs:string(...)
by Mike Beckerle 10 Jul '18

10 Jul '18

The DFDL expression language supports the string(...) function in the xs (xml schema) namespace, not the fn (xpath functions) namespace. A few places in the spec use fn:string(...). These need to change to xs:string(...) I've added this to issue https://redmine.ogf.org/issues/233 which is the one of typographical errors. Mike Beckerle | OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | Tresys Technology | www.tresys.com Please note: Contributions to the DFDL Workgroup's email discussions are subject to the OGF Intellectual Property Policy <http://www.ogf.org/About/abt_policies.php>

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