We have come up with
an approach to how to represent multi-dimensional arrays within
XSD-described XML. The attached test file (.xml) and DFDL Schema
(.dfdl.xsd) illustrate the proposed solution.
The proposal does
not require any changes to XSD, XML or any other special constructs outside of a
single dfdl annotation to specify the storage order of the
representation.
I'm pretty happy
with how this works out. We can handle arrays with different storage orders,
like fortran style column-major vs. more common row-major, and it dovetails
nicely with XPath expressions and the XSD data model. Schema validation can
really do something for you, like tell you if you have all the elements of the
array (if it's fixed size), and that you don't have multiple elements occupying
the same array location.
Those interested in
multi-dimensional array support please give this some consideration.
That said, I'm
departing on vacation for a week, so I'll toss this out there for people to look
at, but I won't be able to interact with you all on it until I get back.
...mikeb