Hi, I only have one follow-up comment to the replies I received: William Lee wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean by "namespace the same as a resolvable URL". The namespace "http://www.ggf.org/namespaces/2005/03/jsdl-o.9.4.xsd" is just an URI, it has no meaning apart from a string that satisfies the required URI syntax. Whether or not that "http://..." string resolves to a network resource or not is not implied and often a cause for confusion.
Namespace are confusing, period. I have worked with XML for several years and still find it difficult to get my head around all the rules for scoping, schema declarations, default NSs, null NS, chameleon NSs, attribute vs. element NSs, etc. My reading of xml-dev general-opinion and (the xsdl-dev mailing list when I used to read it) is that everyone agrees it was a mistake to use "http://..." for something which *looks* like a URL but, in fact, is just a URI and does not (nor perhaps ever will) actually resolve. It is ashame that this has not been embded in the XSDL Schema primer and has been widely adopted. My very strong recommendation would be (in this order): 1. Definitely do not put ".xsd" at the end of the NS. That 100% looks like you are giving a NS with a one-to-one mapping to a resolvable URL to the schema for that namespace. 2. Do not put "http://" at the start. Use "uri:" or "urn:" instead. 3. If you do you "http://" or "*.xsd" then make sure it *does* resolve to something, probably to the "master" or "top-level" schema file. A not-altogether-bad approach might be to have (for example) urn:www.ggf.org/schemas/jsdl/2005/04 and then convince someone that the URL: http://www.ggf.org/schemas/jsdl/2005/04/ should provide some information about where to actually find the various XSD files (by set, by version, etc.) -- perhaps at: http://www.ggf.org/schemas/jsdl/2005/04/jsdl-2005-04.xsd (yes, I know, for redundant see redundant, but it means if the file is copied locally it still has a sensible name). Anyway, just my thoughts on this. Cheers, Ian. -- Ian Stokes-Rees i.stokes-rees@physics.ox.ac.uk Particle Physics, Oxford http://www-pnp.physics.ox.ac.uk/~stokes