Mike, I'm trying to buy into the proposal that the provision of default values on output is not the business of the unparser but I'm having trouble. On the face of it that sounds ok, but I'm bothered with the asymmetry with the parser, where we expect the parser to take a byte stream with absent values and fill in defaults. To be analogous with the unparser, wouldn't the parser then fire events saying 'absent' and let the receiver fill in the defaults? We'll be asked to justify this to wider audience and it needs to be defendable, I'm not sure it currently is....?

Regards, Steve

Steve Hanson
WebSphere Message Brokers
Hursley, UK
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Mike Beckerle <beckerle@us.ibm.com>
Sent by: dfdl-wg-bounces@ogf.org

16/08/2007 17:23

To	dfdl-wg@ogf.org
cc
Subject	[DFDL-WG] Proposal to simlify null/optional/default handling

This proposal is a radical simplification of this stuff. Really collapses it massively. Please give it some thought.

I did go through this with Geoff Judd who did the original research into the complexity of this area.

Mike Beckerle
STSM, Architect, Scalable Computing
IBM Software Group
Information Platform and Solutions
Westborough, MA 01581
direct: voice and FAX 508-599-7148
assistant: Pam Riordan
priordan@us.ibm.com
508-599-7046
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