[dfdl-wg] RE: Attributes - (was Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements)

19 Jan 2006

      Well I wasn't saying that. I was saying that you could do that if things
didn't line up. 

I suppose I don't feel strongly about the restriction I just don't
really see the need.

I have a number of examples of XML which are essentially tables with
lists of elements with just attributes. I could imagine it would be easy
and convenient to populate such a logical model directly using
annotations without forcing the user to add hidden layers...

Martin

  _____  

From: Mike Beckerle [mailto:beckerle@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 12:55 PM
To: Westhead, Martin (Martin)
Cc: dfdl-wg@ggf.org; Suman Kalia; owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org; Steve Hanson
Subject: RE: Attributes - (was Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements)

I agree with you. 

There is one caveat though, you are saying in effect that attributes are
only supported via population to/from other elements or attributes
(which can be hidden). The bottom layer must be elements only. 

With this restriction I am fine with attributes. The vast bulk of the
DFDL spec will simply be unconcerned with them. 

...mikeb 

Mike Beckerle
STSM, Architect, Scalable Computing
IBM Software Group
Information Integration Solutions
Westborough, MA 01581
voice and FAX 508-599-7148
home/mobile office 508-915-4767

"Westhead, Martin \(Martin\)" <westhead@avaya.com> 

01/19/2006 03:45 PM 

To

Mike Beckerle/Worcester/IBM@IBMUS 

cc

<dfdl-wg@ggf.org>, "Suman Kalia" <kalia@ca.ibm.com>,
<owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org>, "Steve Hanson" <smh@uk.ibm.com> 

Subject

RE: Attributes - (was Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements)

Perhaps there is a discussion here for later, but with hidden elements I
don't think there's much of an issue here. 

My take on this is that we are using the XSD to do more than it is
supposed to, we are not just using it to describe valid XML we are using
it constructively to describe how to build an XML instance. We are
establishing a semantics for how the DFDL parser constructs this XML
document from the XSD and the data. 

Now, it is easy to imagine cases where you have a particular xml model
you want to populate which is similar to the data but is perhaps a
subset with slightly different ordering. Hidden elements make this easy
to handle. You put the stuff that is to be omitted in a hidden element.
Stuff that is out of order can be put in hidden elements and then
referenced by correctly ordered elements for value. 

In this framework attributes are just another node for data population.
If it happens that you can arrange the XML Schema so that the order in
which attributes are laid out in the file corresponds to the ordering of
the data, well then its no different from elements. If there are
constraints that prevent that ordering then you are in a situation just
like the one I describe above and you solve it with hidden elements. 

So I don't really disagree with your points below it just seems to me
that there's nothing much to worry about here. I can't see why we would
put it off - there's no extra work to do?

Cheers, 

Martin 

  _____  

From: Mike Beckerle [mailto:beckerle@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 12:27 PM
To: Westhead, Martin (Martin)
Cc: dfdl-wg@ggf.org; Suman Kalia; owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org; Steve Hanson
Subject: Re: Attributes - (was Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements) 

Here's some of the issues with attributes: 

1) every element can have two kinds of children now, attributes and
sub-elements. Actual DFDL-described data will typically have just one
kind of sub-fields of data, but some want to be mapped to attributes,
others to elements. How do you specify how the attributes are separated
from the elements. Do the attributes have to be first, or last, or can
they be interleaved with the sub-elements' physical data? 
2) in XSD syntax, if you define a element with both sub-elements and
attributes, the attributes textually come after the sub-elements. This
means you may or may not have them in the right order for DFDL
annotation to be convenient. E.g., suppose you had 5 children the first
2 you want to be attributes the remaining 3 sub-elements in a sequence.
How can you annotate this conveniently? 
3)The attributes are always unordered w.r.t. the XSD concept, but the
sub-elements can be either ordered or un-ordered. 

These all seemed like avoidable issues. That is, I'm not saying there is
no good solution here, I'm just saying it's probably uninteresting. 

One solution to the whole issue is to say that attributes can't be in
the bottom-most layer. I.e., you create them by referencing element
values in hidden or non-hidden layers. This eliminates all the above
problems.It is equivalent to using a stylesheet to create the attributes
you want from elements-only data. However, by use of the layers you can
embed it all right into the DFDL schema. 

I also believe attributes are to some extent beside the point for DFDL.
What we needed from XSD is a standardized hierarchical type system that
we can hang represetnation properties on. We get that by using the
elements-only subset of XSD. Attributes are only needed if we broaden
our agenda to include "creating the XML I want out of my data", which
layering can do. 

Mike Beckerle
STSM, Architect, Scalable Computing
IBM Software Group
Information Integration Solutions
Westborough, MA 01581
voice and FAX 508-599-7148
home/mobile office 508-915-4767

"Westhead, Martin \(Martin\)" <westhead@avaya.com> 

01/19/2006 03:05 PM 

To

Mike Beckerle/Worcester/IBM@IBMUS 

cc

<dfdl-wg@ggf.org>, "Suman Kalia" <kalia@ca.ibm.com>,
<owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org>, "Steve Hanson" <smh@uk.ibm.com> 

Subject

Attributes - (was Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements)

I think (hope) that with the emerging operational semantics, that there
will not be any problems putting annotations into attributes and having
them evaluated just like an element. It is not obvious to me that they
are any different. 

Martin 

  _____  

From: Mike Beckerle [mailto:beckerle@us.ibm.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 12:03 PM
To: Westhead, Martin (Martin)
Cc: dfdl-wg@ggf.org; Suman Kalia; owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org; Steve Hanson
Subject: RE: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements 

I think we did not agree formally to this. It was one of those things
where we're trying to find something we can cut out with low risk of
later complications. 

Mike Beckerle
STSM, Architect, Scalable Computing
IBM Software Group
Information Integration Solutions
Westborough, MA 01581
voice and FAX 508-599-7148
home/mobile office 508-915-4767

"Westhead, Martin (Martin)" <westhead@avaya.com> 
Sent by: owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org 

01/19/2006 01:59 PM 

To

"Suman Kalia" <kalia@ca.ibm.com>, "Steve Hanson" <smh@uk.ibm.com> 

cc

Mike Beckerle/Worcester/IBM@IBMUS, <dfdl-wg@ggf.org>,
<owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org> 

Subject

RE: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements

Why are we not allowing attributes? 

Martin 

  _____  

From: owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org [mailto:owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org] On Behalf Of
Suman Kalia
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 10:57 AM
To: Steve Hanson
Cc: Mike Beckerle; dfdl-wg@ggf.org; owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org
Subject: Fw: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements 

The main problem will be performance and excessively long validation
times and either asking the user to change their schema or model it
different way. These are all undesirable.  Attributes I hope will be
supported in the future release .  Redefine construct is hardly used in
the practical applications; at least I haven't come across any customer
that uses this construct .. 

Suman Kalia
IBM Toronto Lab
WebSphere Business Integration Application Connectivity Tools 
Tel : 905-413-3923  T/L  969-3923
Fax : 905-413-4850
Internet ID : kalia@ca.ibm.com 
----- Forwarded by Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM on 01/19/2006 01:49 PM ----- 

Steve Hanson <smh@uk.ibm.com> 

01/19/2006 01:15 PM 

To

Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA 

cc

Mike Beckerle <beckerle@us.ibm.com>, dfdl-wg@ggf.org,
owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org 

Subject

Re: Fw: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements

We are already putting constraints on user-defined schema, by saying
that
we don't support redefines and attributes for example. I don't see an
issue
with further constraints if they make DFDL easier to understand and/or
easier to create a DFDL parser.

I don't have a problem with saying that an XPath must return a single
unambiguous node else it is an error.
I don't have a problem with saying the XPaths can't reference hidden
elements, and that context must be used instead.

Regards, Steve

Steve Hanson
WebSphere Message Brokers,
IBM Hursley, England
Internet: smh@uk.ibm.com
Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848

         Suman Kalia                                                   
         <kalia@ca.ibm.com                                             
         >                                                          To 
         Sent by:                  Mike Beckerle <beckerle@us.ibm.com> 
         owner-dfdl-wg@ggf                                          cc 
         .org                      dfdl-wg@ggf.org,                    
                                   owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org               
                                                               Subject 
         19/01/2006 18:02          Fw: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous XPaths to   
                                   hidden elements                     

Well if we go with global complex type approach (which I described
option 1
in previous append) then it is not issue.. XPATH work and there are no
conflicts with user defined schemas ..

Suman Kalia
IBM Toronto Lab
WebSphere Business Integration Application Connectivity Tools
Tel : 905-413-3923  T/L  969-3923
Fax : 905-413-4850
Internet ID : kalia@ca.ibm.com
----- Forwarded by Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM on 01/19/2006 12:59 PM -----

Mike

Beckerle/Worcester/IBM@IBMUS

                                                                    To 
01/19/2006 12:59 PM                        Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA

                                                                    cc 
                                        dfdl-wg@ggf.org,               
                                        owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org          
                                                               Subject 
                                        Re: Fw: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous    
                                        XPaths to hidden elementsLink  

So we have a quandry here:

on one hand we don't want to change the XPath syntax to include a device
that would let us be clear that we're navigating a hidden layer

on the other hand we don't want to constrain what can be included so
that
we wouldn't need such a device.

...mikeb

Mike Beckerle
STSM, Architect, Scalable Computing
IBM Software Group
Information Integration Solutions
Westborough, MA 01581
voice and FAX 508-599-7148
home/mobile office 508-915-4767

Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM@IBMCA

01/19/2006 11:52 AM
To 
                                         Mike                          
                                         Beckerle/Worcester/IBM@IBMUS  
                                                                    cc 
                                         dfdl-wg@ggf.org,              
                                         owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org         
                                                               Subject 
                                         Fw: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous       
                                         XPaths to hidden elements     

As a design point ,  We should strive not to put limitations on the user
defined schemas - it just works out better in the long run.

Note the xsd:groups can be nested and they could be many levels deep and
this problem is not restricted to groups included  from noTarget
namespace
, it could be from any namespace.  As per schema rules, all local
elements
defined in groups or complex types belong to noTarget namespace unless
elementFormDefault is explicitly set to "qualified" at schema level or
on
the specific element.

Detecting such conflicts could be quite expensive particularly when you
have very large schemas.  Industry standard ACORD messaging schema is a
good example it is about 1.5 M and it takes awfully long (hours) to
validate it.  Putting additional constraints like this will further slow
down validation.

Suman Kalia
IBM Toronto Lab
WebSphere Business Integration Application Connectivity Tools
Tel : 905-413-3923  T/L  969-3923
Fax : 905-413-4850
Internet ID : kalia@ca.ibm.com
----- Forwarded by Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM on 01/19/2006 11:39 AM -----

Mike Beckerle

<beckerle@us.ibm.com>

Sent by: owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org

                                                                    To 
                                          "Robert E. McGrath"          
01/19/2006 10:48 AM                          <mcgrath@ncsa.uiuc.edu>

                                                                    cc 
                                          dfdl-wg@ggf.org,             
                                          owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org        
                                                               Subject 
                                          Re: Fw: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous  
                                          XPaths to hidden elements    

One idea that hasn't been advanced yet is ruling out the problematic
case.

Let me illustrate. Here's the example, modified to have a model group
reference which can introduce the name conflict:

<xs:element name="root">
<xs:complexType>
                           <xs:sequence>
                                           <xs:annotation><xs:appinfo
source="http://dataformat.org" />
                                        <hidden>

<xs:element name="repeats" type="xs:integer"/>
                                                           </hidden>
                                           </xs:appinfo></xs:annotation
...
<xs:element name="testElement"
type="xs:integer " minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"
                            dfdl:repeatCount="../repeats">

                           <xs:group ref="groupFromOtherSchemaFile"/>
<!-- what if this has an element decl named "repeats"? -->

           </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

So, what hasn't been suggested yet is this: What if we just say DFDL
doesn't allow this? It's an error which must be detected. This DFDL
schema
is broken because the path "../repeats" cannot be analyzed along with
the
DFDL schema to return only a single node.

I beleive name conflicts like this are what namespace management is for.
XSD has truly great namespace managment. You can solve the problem that
way.

Furthermore, when you define a reusable named group like the definer of
the
"groupFromOtherSchemaFile" above, and you put it in no target namespace,
that's the situation where this conflict can arise. Expecting that your
names are never going to conflict with anything in that case is just
naive.
It's equivalent to having global variables in a C program module and
expecting you can never link it to something else that uses the same
names.
Those name conflicts can occur, and someone has to change the
conflicting
name. In XSD we can do that by including the group in a schema which
puts
it into a target namespace so that after that the namespaces can be used
to
disambiguate.

The approach above is consistent with the path "../repeats" still being
officialy an "XPath", it just adds the semantic restriction that it must
be
an XPath that identifies a single node unambiguously, independent of
what
data is being processed. This is one of these "data independent" notions
(what I had previously been calling "static"), as we discussed
yesterday.

...mikeb

"Robert E. McGrath"

<mcgrath@ncsa.uiuc.edu>

Sent by: owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org

                                                                    To 
                                            dfdl-wg@ggf.org            
01/19/2006 10:00 AM
cc 

                                                               Subject 
                                            Re: Fw: [dfdl-wg]          
                                            Ambiguous XPaths to hidden 
                                            elements                   

I would want to change XPath only as a last resort.  (Any of the
options is OK by me, assuming we have to mess with the Xpath
at all.)

Can we deal with this some other way?

Can we document the problematic cases, and suggest best practices that
will minimize the problem?

On Thursday 19 January 2006 08:45, Suman Kalia wrote:
...
I fully agree with Steve - let's not invent another XPATH like syntax
..
Suman Kalia
IBM Toronto Lab
WebSphere Business Integration Application Connectivity Tools
Tel : 905-413-3923  T/L  969-3923
Fax : 905-413-4850
Internet ID : kalia@ca.ibm.com
----- Forwarded by Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM on 01/19/2006 09:43 AM

...
Steve Hanson <smh@uk.ibm.com>
Sent by: owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org
01/19/2006 04:43 AM
To
"Westhead, Martin (Martin)" <westhead@avaya.com>
cc
dfdl-wg@ggf.org, owner-dfdl-wg@ggf.org
Subject
Re: [dfdl-wg] Ambiguous XPaths to hidden elements
As a DFDL parser implementor I do not want modifications to the XPath
syntax. I want to be able to reuse existing XPath implementations.
It's
...
also something else for the user to have to learn. So 2a/b/c are not
attractive.
Regards, Steve
Steve Hanson
WebSphere Message Brokers,
IBM Hursley, England
Internet: smh@uk.ibm.com
Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848
"Westhead, Martin
             (Martin)"
             <westhead@avaya.c
To
om>                       <dfdl-wg@ggf.org>
             Sent by:
cc
owner-dfdl-wg@ggf
             .org
Subject
[dfdl-wg] Ambiguous XPaths to
                                       hidden elements
             18/01/2006 20:24
Hi folks,
This is to try to pick up on the issue identified by Suman in today?s
call.
The Issue
Consider the following example:
<xs:element name="root">
<xs:complexType>
                                <xs:sequence>
<xs:annotation><xs:appinfo
...
source=?http://dataformat.org? />
                                             <hidden>
<xs:element name="repeats" type="xs:integer"/>
</hidden>
...
</xs:appinfo></xs:annotation >
                                <xs:element name="testElement"
type="xs:integer " minOccurs=?0? maxOccurs=?unbounded?
                                 dfdl:repeatCount=?../repeats?>
                </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
The problem is that the path ?../repeats? can be broken by
modifications
...
to
the logical model due to name clashes on ?repeats? and there are cases
that
can be constructed where this would not be obvious to a user.
Possible Solutions
Possible fixes to this include:
   1.  Disallow  XPath  references to hidden elements the user is
forced
to
      place the material into the global context to refer to it.
   2.  Provide  a  special  XPath operator to indicate we are
referencing
a
      hidden element, possibilities include:
         a. ?../hidden(repeats)?
         b.  ?hidden(../repeats)?
         c.  ?../dfdl:hidden/repeats?
   3.  Only allow hidden elements to be present in top level global
complex
      types. These can then be included where needed. (This is the
solution
      that  Suman  was  pushing  but  I  don?t  fully  understand  it
?
in
      particular I don?t see how it resolves the ambiguity issue.)
I believe my preference here is 2a or 2b followed by 1.
Comments/suggestions/opinions?
Thanks,
Martin
--
---
Robert E. McGrath, Ph.D.
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
1205 West Clark
Urbana, Illinois 61801
(217)-333-6549

mcgrath@ncsa.uiuc.edu