[DFDL-WG] Fw: Reducing the number of DFDL properties.

[Suman Kalia]

nullTerminated  is a very familiar paradigm which the users understand. We 
need to keep usability in mind; keep simple tasks simple. Yes it is 
redundant and you can do the same with 2 properties ( lengthKind=delimited 
and terminator=NULL) but it is well worth to keep it..  Same argument can 
be made for trimKind..

I am ok if we drop typeSubstitution although it is a convenient way to 
specify whole bunch properties grouped together for a type and reuse it.
 
Suman Kalia
IBM Toronto Lab
WMB Toolkit Architect and Development Lead
WebSphere Business Integration Application Connectivity Tools 

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/businessintegration/wmb.html


Tel : 905-413-3923  T/L  969-3923
Fax : 905-413-4850 T/L  969-4850
Internet ID : kalia at ca.ibm.com
----- Forwarded by Suman Kalia/Toronto/IBM on 02/26/2009 01:52 PM -----

From:
Alan Powell <alan_powell at uk.ibm.com>
To:
mbeckerle.dfdl at gmail.com
Cc:
dfdl-wg at ogf.org
Date:
02/26/2009 12:27 PM
Subject:
[DFDL-WG] Reducing the number of DFDL properties.




Mike 

A number of people at IBM have become concerned at the number of 
properties in DFDL and have identified a number of 'usability' properties 
that could be dropped. They feel that we should be simplifying the 
properties wherever possible and not introducing multiple ways of doing 
the same function without very good reason. 

The following are offered for consideration. 
1.      lengthKind='nullterminated'
This is just shorthand for lengthKind=delimited and terminator='%Null'. It 
was felt this this is not even the most common terminator so why have a 
special case? 
2.      trimKind
It is felt that there aren't any cases when you would want to pad but not 
trim and vice versa so make padKind control both. 
3.      typeSubstitution.
Is this needed in DFDL v1?

Can you consider these before the call next week 

Alan Powell

MP 211, IBM UK Labs, Hursley,  Winchester, SO21 2JN, England
Notes Id: Alan Powell/UK/IBM     email: alan_powell at uk.ibm.com 
Tel: +44 (0)1962 815073                  Fax: +44 (0)1962 816898





Unless stated otherwise above:
IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 
741598. 
Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU 





--
  dfdl-wg mailing list
  dfdl-wg at ogf.org
  http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/dfdl-wg
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/dfdl-wg/attachments/20090226/c4deeb0d/attachment-0001.html