http://norman.walsh.name/2005/10/27/xmlProcModel 8 138 2005-10-27T13:00:44-04:00 $Date: 2005-11-17 16:58:20 -0500 (Thu, 17 Nov 2005) $ Norman Walsh 2005 Norman Walsh Public at last! One of the goals of this working group is to define a standard language for expressing the way in which XML processing is to be applied to a document or set of documents. In other words, how to get validation, XInclude, transformations, and other processes in the right order with the right parameters. Oh, and I'm chairing it. I'm guessing that most of my readers who are even the slightest bit interested in this topic already have a pretty good idea of what I mean when I say “an XML processing model language” or “an XML pipeline” but in case you don't, I've written about it before, and Jeni Tennison presented an excellent motivational paper at XTech 2005, “Managing Complex Document Generation through Pipelining”. In any event, after much procedural wrangling, the W3C has finally chartered a new Working Group in the XML Activity to address the problem of a standard XML pipeline language, the XML Processing Model Working Group. And they persuaded me to chair it, for better or worse. :-) The charter lays out the scope, goals, and deliverables pretty well, so I won't bother recapitulating them here. If you work for a W3C member company interested in pipelines, now's the time to get your ACAdvisory Committee rep to sign you up! If you don't work for a member company, but you have a burning interest in pipelines, let me know. The WG doesn't really exist yet; the call-for-participation is out, but I have no idea who will join, what they'll bring to the table, or what they'll want to do. So even though I'm chairing, I won't attempt to speak in any official capacity for the Working Group. (I wouldn't speak in any official capacity in this forum anyway, but nevermind.) That said, as a WG member, I'll put a stake in the ground early on. There has been a lot of work done in this area. A half hour spent with a search engine and my mail archives turned up all of these efforts either about XML pipelines or directly related to them Apologies, in advance, if I left out your favorite. Let me know and I'll happily add it to the list. : Cocoon Sitemaps Device Neutral Pipelined Processing of XML Documents (Poster Proceedings of the Twelfth International World Wide Web Conference) xmlecho (added 17 Nov 2005) Jelly MT Pipeline NetKernel Oracle's XML Pipeline Definition Language Controller Implementation Re-Interpreting the XML Pipeline Note Schemachine smallx SXPipe: Simple XML Pipelines XML Pipeline Definition Language Version 1.0 XML Pipeline Language (XPL) Version 1.0 XML Validation Interoperability Framework (XVIF) XNI XPipe I want to figure out what 80% of the intersection of those languages is, write it up as a specification, slap “1.0” on it, and ship it. As soon as possible. Then I want to get support for that language coded up and into the Java Platform so it'll be available everywhere. I have no philosophical objection to grander processing model schemes, but we needed this in 2001. I have no interest in an ocean boiling exercise to define the be-all and end-all of process choreography languages. Let's keep it simple. Yes, it is likely that more powerful and sophisticated languages will come after 1.0. Yes, it would be best if the 1.0 language could be extended in some clean way to incorporate these new features. Yes, having some level of abstraction often aids in achieving those goals. But none of those facts diminish the value of a good, small, widely (in the best of all possible worlds, universally) deployed, practical and understandable pipeline language that will let a competent XML hacker craft a functional pipeline in Emacs without needing to refer to the documentation six times. IMNSHO. But what's really important is your opinion, and we'll find that out by getting consensus on a revision of the requirements document to start with.