We had been reviewing the facets and default/null/optional a few weeks back. I said I would make revisions as a number of people had objections. Here are documents based on these comments. Main things I did: (1) strict adherence to minOccurs and maxOccurs. No more notion that these are only for validity checking. (2) simple rule for default values: if it's required and there's a default value, then use the default value. This is for both input and output. I put a bunch of work into illustrating the semantics of things like dfdl:separatorPolicy="suppress" and so forth. I had been trying to simplify this, but gave up. We're back to 3 policies here: keep, suppress, suppressAtEnd. I did figure out a way to express these via DFDL rewriting. ...mikeb 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