XML Working Group

Meeting Notes

January 18, 2006

This meeting was hosted by GPO in Washington DC.

Paul Macias (LMI) and Greg Wilson (LMI) updated the group on the status of the XML Naming and Design Rules and Guidelines (NDRG) document. Paul walked the group through final draft changes made to sections 1 through 3. The group consensus was that more time was required to review the updated sections fully. Paul advised the group that a review of the proposed completion schedule was forthcoming to accommodate for this time (see below).

A comment was made that the inclusion of message exchange patterns was out of scope and that it addresses only a small part of the subject. Greg and Paul noted that the inclusion of this content is meant to serve as a suggestion to federal XML implementers that they should try to design a consistent approach to errors and message exchange as possible. They added that inclusion of this subsection will help to lower the barrier to interoperability (in addition to the content naming rules and guidelines) but that the CoP is welcome to remove this section if that’s the wisdom of the group.

Proposed Completion Schedule

Sections 1-3:

     {January 17 - Edited version out for final review}

     February 15 - Closing of comments for Sections 1 -3

     February 21 - Commenter call for Section 1 - 3 ONLY

Sections 4-8 (Including Appendices):

     February 22 - Edited version out for final review

     March 2 - Closing of comments for Section 4 - 8, including Appendices

     March 8 - Commenter call for Sections 4 - 8, including Appendices

March 13 - Sections 1 -8, including Appendices posted in the morning

March 15 - XML CoP meeting

The group discussed tools support and the ability to test the NDRG. This discussion revolved around what it means, exactly, to test the rules and guidelines. Comments were made that tests can be done against some of the rules in the document (such as namespace conformance). Other rules and guidelines cannot be tested with tools. Still other tests could be done to verify that XML Schemas conforming to the rules and guidelines will work well when bound to application code—the end user and manifestation of these models. The challenge to this initiative will be to devise an effective and comprehensive test suite for the NDRG.