Folks, while reading the ParameterSweep spec draft 13, I came again to the definition of the sweep:DocumentNode definition. The DocumentNode is defined as of type xs:string containing a XPath 2.0 expression. This is the issue that I had numerous discussions with various people about. Despite having different reasons for why changing this, I agree with all of those people that it would be not wise to leave the definition of DocumentNode as it is without amending it. In short, XML tooling does not universally provide namespace bindings declared in the containing XML document ([XML Namespace] spec is in complete silence whether namespace bindings are in scope for XML *content*), or do not guarantee that namespace bindings are up to date to match the prefixes used in the XPath expression. That means that the XPath processor has no guarantee that it can resolve all prefixes used in the XPath expression can be resolved to the correct namespaces, or even to any namespace at all. The solution is to make the namespace bindings explicit that have been used to construct the XPath expression. That way, the ParameterSweep specification is independent of the tooling used by any implementer (which is a good thing :-). I therefore propose to amend the DocumentNode element with an attribute that makes the bindings explicit as follows: The attribute shall be named "mapping", and shall be defined as a mandatory anonymous XML attribute on the DocumentNode element. The attribute shall be of type "list of Strings" further constrained as follows: - It MUST have an even number of string parts. - The list MUST be formed as follows: Part 0: Namespace URI Part 1: Prefix for part 0 Part n+2: Namespace URI Part n+3: Prefix for Part n+2 The following is a brief example how the DocumentNode element would be used in a Sweep: <sweep:DocumentNode mapping="http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix foo http://schemas.ggf.org/jsdl/2005/11/jsdl-posix bar"> //foo:POSIXApplication/bar:Argument[4] <sweep:DocumentNode> Note that the example is quite artificial as it binds the same namespace to two different prefixes. Nonetheless, it is a valid example. I will also add a tracker issue for this. Comments please? Cheers, Michel -- Michel Drescher Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe, Ltd. Hayes Park Central Hayes End Road Hayes, Middlesex UB4 8FE Reg. No. 4153469 +44 20 8606 4834 Michel.Drescher@uk.fujitsu.com