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<div>Another marvellous piece of heresy from 
<a href="http://www.mnot.net/">Mark Nottingham</a>: 
<a href="http://www.mnot.net/blog/2004/08/05/document_oriented">The
Document in Document-Oriented Messaging</a>. He analyses the
modelling aspects of XML, noting the good points, then gets his
teeth into XML Schema and the Infoset.
 Some classic lines:
 
<cite>
 Why do Web services folks think
itÃ¢â¬â¢s OK for end
users to use XML Schema if it
isnÃ¢â¬â¢t good enough
for describing WSDL?
 …
 However, XML was made for document markup, not data
modelling. … The result is
Ã¢â¬â for data-oriented
use cases Ã¢â¬â a
complex data model not designed for the task at hand being
described by a sub-optimal constraint language.
 </cite>
 I think his description of the problems are pretty accurate,
what I find a little worrying is that his conclusions for future
work are that 
either profiling and subsetting XML Schema and the InfoSet; 
or starting fresh 
and/or changing horses. There is already a WG for the first,
apparently. By changing horses he means using RDF and OWL. 
Woo-hoo! I hear 
<s>you</s> me say. But it's troublesome that he characterises it as
a 
<a href="http://www.mnot.net/blog/2004/05/28/other_data_models">whole
different stack</a>.

<a href="http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-05.htm">
 <img title="she turned me into a newt" src="http://dannyayers.com/2004/08/faircop.jpg" alt="witch in the balance"></img>
</a>
 I'm more optimistic that a 
merging of horses is possible, that there is common ground.
If there isn't enough common ground then there's a lot more trouble
ahead - the WS brigade pushing forward with an inadequate but
Baroque model and RDF folks wondering why everybody's so obsessed
with syntax they won't use their lovely graphs.
Oh yeah, that's 
*now*, isn't it…

 <a href="http://www.mgnet.karoo.net/FATHER%20TED/FATHERTED.htm">
 <img title="I want to shower you with sugarlumps..." src="http://dannyayers.com/2004/08/lovelyhorse.gif" alt="Father Teds horse"></img>
 </a>

(spotter: 
<a href="http://morenews.blogspot.com/2004/08/shape-of-data.html">Andrew
Newman</a>)
PS. On a moderately related note, here's a good post on KISS and
WS-* from 
<a href="http://www.adambosworth.net/archives/000024.html">Adam
Bosworth</a>[Danny]
</div>