[UR-WG] LAST CALL - Usage Record Format Recommendation - Version 1

[Gilbert Netzer]

Hi everybody,

since I am new to XML and this list, I probably am going to make a 
redundant or simply wrong point. I just have some thoughts about the 
A1 proposal of Rosario:

First of all I think that version handling is very important, 
especially since I guess that the UR spec is going to change in the 
future.

My question is, is not the XML namespace attribute (xmlns="...") 
telling the parser what exactly the XML document may look like. Since 
a new version will have some changes in what XML tags can and cannot 
be used, should it not have a new namespace. In this case, versioning 
could be done via well known namespaces that different tools can 
recognize (and know how to fetch the schema for and how to interpret 
the tags). In that case the version attribute seems to be redundant.

If the XML namespace is not changed for a new version would it not 
make some of the old URs invalid if e.g. a tag was removed from the 
new version, plus make some invalid old URs valid if they conform to 
the new version?

So to sum up I think that the XML namespace could be used to mark the 
version of a UR.

Please correct me if I am wrong!

Best Regards
Gilbert Netzer

Rosario Piro wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> I'm sorry for sending my comments on the UR spec for version 1 this late
> (but then, I still respect the deadline :o), but I was quite busy lately
> (as always) ...
> 
> The list is quite long. Most points are just minor corrections, such as
> wrong references between Sections of the document, but there are some very
> important observations as well, so please read carefully through them!
> I'd appreciate some comments above all to A1 (proposal to have a version
> attribute for UR instances, and to also specify the version in the schema)
> since I think it is important.
> 
> Cheers, Rosario.
> 
> Here are my comments:
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> Comments on version 1 of the UR spec:
> 
> IMPORTANT PROPOSAL:
> 
> A1) Since we are currently finishing version 1, but are also thinking
> about version 2 we should make sure that different UR
> versions can be easily distinguished by processing software (e.g.
> accounting systems), this means the version should be specified
> in both, the schema itself (as part of the annotation) and each instance
> of a UR document.
> 
> For example:
> 
> <JobUsageRecord version="1.0">     (or <UsageRecord version="1.0">)
> ..
> </JobUsageRecord>
> 
> Otherwise announting tools will have a hard time figuering out against
> what version of the UR spec they should validate a specific
> instance. The specification of a version should me _required_ for each
> instance. I am aware that this might imply problems for
> already existing implementations based on earlier drafts, but it will
> avoid a lot of trouble in the future (think about major
> changes in version 2, 3, 4, wheverever we will end up).