Subject: [IDMEF] IESG Comment section A.3.4

From: Herve Debar <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 14:20:16 +0100

Section A.3.4:
 > [[
 >    As a note of interest, XML Schemas, currently being developed by the
 >    W3C, will provide support for inheritance, as well as stronger data
 >    typing and other useful features.  Future versions of the IDMEF will
 >    probably use XML Schemas instead of DTDs; this is not currently
 >    possible because the XML Schema Recommendation has not been
 >    finalized.
 > ]]
 >
 > How *old* is this document?  XML schema was approved as a W3C
 > Recommendation (approximately their equivalent to IETF full standard)
 > over 18 months ago -- http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema

Suggestion: drop paragraph.

Now, we haven't moved to schemas yet. I have the IDMEF schema that was 
developped some time ago, as well as the examples, and will make these 
available as soon as I can. Do we want to 1) move completely, 2) keep 
DTD only or 3) provide both (if possible ??). Reactions please.

Hervé
-- 
Hervé Debar             <mailto:[email-masked]>
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---

From: "David A. Curry" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:48:21 -0500

>>>>> On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Herve Debar, identified as "Herve" below, wrote:

  Herve> Section A.3.4:

  +> [[ As a note of interest, XML Schemas, currently being developed by the
  +> W3C, will provide support for inheritance, as well as stronger data typing
  +> and other useful features.  Future versions of the IDMEF will probably use
  +> XML Schemas instead of DTDs; this is not currently possible because the
  +> XML Schema Recommendation has not been finalized. ]]

  +> How *old* is this document?  XML schema was approved as a W3C
  +> Recommendation (approximately their equivalent to IETF full standard) over
  +> 18 months ago -- http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema

  Herve> Suggestion: drop paragraph.

Yes, drop the paragraph.

  Herve> Now, we haven't moved to schemas yet. I have the IDMEF schema that was
  Herve> developped some time ago, as well as the examples, and will make these
  Herve> available as soon as I can. Do we want to 1) move completely, 2) keep
  Herve> DTD only or 3) provide both (if possible ??). Reactions please.

I believe we did agree to move to schemas, although maybe I'm wrong.

My first choice would be (3), but recognize that this provides ample opportunity
for the two to get out of sync or be otherwise incompatible.  I think I would
only adopt this approach if there's a way to maintain the schema as the "real"
implementation, and use some schema-to-dtd conversion tool (if such a thing
exists) to produce the dtd.

If that's not possible, then my choice would be (1) -- schemas solve a lot of
the problems the DTD approach had to kind of kludge its way around (like data
types and data formats).

--Dave