[DFDL-WG] OGF DFDL WG minutes 2007-12-05 call
Mike Beckerle
beckerle at us.ibm.com
Thu Dec 6 07:50:02 CST 2007
I tend to trust your instincts about things Steve,
I would summarize it as this: regardless of how people think nulls
*should* work, in XSD nillables are orthogonal to value and whether or not
this matches people's past experience we should support it if we're going
to overload nillable at all.
To me this reasoning is pretty compelling, so I withdraw my suggestion
(the "either nillable or default value but not both" idea).
...mikeb
Steve Hanson <smh at uk.ibm.com>
12/06/2007 04:59 AM
To
Mike Beckerle/Worcester/IBM at IBMUS
cc
dfdl-wg at ogf.org, dfdl-wg-bounces at ogf.org
Subject
Re: [DFDL-WG] OGF DFDL WG minutes 2007-12-05 call
Unfortunately I have been roped into something else which will likely
occupy me full time until middle of next week, so I can't look at the
defaults/nulls issue in detail right now. But my first reaction to the
proposal below is that elements should be allowed to have both null and
default values. They are separate concepts in XML Schema, so why are we
making the DFDL logical model different? IMHO subtle differences like
this cause more issues with customers than the odd extra DFDL property.
The DFDL subset of XML Schema should be just that - a subset. For those
features of XML Schema that we do support, the rules should be the same.
Regards, Steve
Steve Hanson
WebSphere Message Brokers
Hursley, UK
Internet: smh at uk.ibm.com
Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848
Mike Beckerle <beckerle at us.ibm.com>
Sent by: dfdl-wg-bounces at ogf.org
05/12/2007 23:21
To
dfdl-wg at ogf.org
cc
Subject
[DFDL-WG] OGF DFDL WG minutes 2007-12-05 call
OGF DFDL WG minutes 2007-12-05 call
Suman Kalia, Simon Parker, Alan Powell, Mike Beckerle
(who else? - was someone else on also)
We discussed
Output issues in the DFDL expression language:
E.g.., an outputValueCalc for a field in the header of a data stream may
contain information that requires you to know the rep, or length of the
rep, of the whole data item.
We concluded that this kind of thing can't be ruled out. Some formats just
require buffering and are not streamable; however, implementations can
vary on just how large a data item they're able to cope with here.
Expression language section will include a subsection highlighting this
issue and that implementations can vary here.
Alan will update his expression language proposal and include this.
Also suggested was a path length-from-to function that takes 2 path
expressions and gives you the size of the represntation between them.
(start of first, to last bit before start of 2nd).
(I don't think we discussed a clear use case motivating this, but there
may be one. We did discuss applications trying to fit data into limited
size boxes, but the use case is not clear.
Also note that all representation lengths are subject to change due to
different starting alignments.)
Nillable and Default:
We also discussed the interaction of nillable and having a default.
The sense of the group on the call is that we can restrict these so that
if something is nillable it cannot also have a default value, and that the
behavior of DFDL on output for a required element that is nillable but not
in the logical data, is to create a null value. Everyone agreed that there
is no need for a property useNullValueForDefault because this should
always be the behavior.
Mike will forward a proposal.
...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 at us.ibm.com
508-599-7046
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