Donal K. Fellows wrote:
Michel Drescher wrote:
here's a write-up of the parameter sweep extension.
If possible, I'd like to have a discussion about it on the upcoming call.
A few comments.
It's possible to structure the Assignment stuff so that the xsi:type arguments may be omitted. The key is that you have to declare elements and a substitution group as well. Given that, there's no ambiguity in the resulting documents and tooling like Axis does the right thing, generating an inheritance hierarchy.
Yes I know. Both alternatives -- abstract types and substitutionGroups -- are functionally equivalent. So whichever fits best current tooling (the draft is in quite early stage, though) should be used in the extension. I have no preference, really. On the other hand, the substitutionGroup technique requires you to define a default assignment function. I think there is no default assignment function that would be applicable here.
Your example (Appendix 2) omits required SweepGroup elements. This leads me to ask which is actually definitive about your proposal; the example or the schema/spec.
Actually, it doesn't. I tried to write the draft proposal in the style of element information sets, but I obviously failed. ;-) In fact, the schema came into existence first; I hacked the document yesterday -- which seem quite obvious regarding the language used. ;-) Hence the example does not omit the SweepGroup element -- "SweepGroup" is an XML Schema group that does not render element start and end tags. Again, if tooling does not support that very well if at all, it is a matter of seconds to change that to a plain old contain er element.
It would be nice to be able to attach some kind of way of restricting the space being swept; I might want to sweep an even grid of points excepting omitting a few where I know there are singularities (e.g. the origin, a fairly common case!)
I think I know what you mean. Let's talk about it (and have some schema fun?) today at FLE.
Will it be possible to sweep over non-string content (e.g. element content)? Like this, it would be easy to sweep over, say, EPRs...
The "Parameter" element's value is a XPath expression. So it may evaluate to an attribute's value or element value. If the assignment function is chosen wisely, then it yields strings that contain XML snippets. This way, you can sweep over EPRs... As I said, the draft proposal is in a fairly early stage. While this implies a nice amount of work yet uncompleted it also has nice opportunities, like "plug in your use case here!(TM)" ;-) Cheers, Michel -- Michel <dot> Drescher <at> uk <dot> fujitsu <dot> com Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe +44 20 8606 4834