The W3C XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Working Group has posted the first public working drafts of Basic XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0 and Advanced XML Schema Patterns for Databinding Version 1.0. According to the basic spec,
A representative collection of databinding implementations in common use has been used to provide an indication of the "state of the art". State of the art databinding implementations have displayed uneven and inconsistent support of the W3C [XML Schema 1.0] Recommendation resulting in impaired interoperability and a poor user experience of databinding tools:
- rejecting valid [XML Schema 1.0] documents,
- rejecting valid [XML 1.0] instance documents, and
- making the content of valid [XML 1.0] instance documents unavailable in mapped data structures.
This specification provides a basic set of example [XML Schema 1.0] constructs and types in the form of concrete [XPath 2.0] expressions. These patterns are known to work well with state of the art databinding implementations.
Authors of [XML Schema 1.0] documents may find these patterns useful in providing a better user experience for consumers of their schemata using databinding tools. Whilst it is not possible to guarantee that schemata produced using these patterns will give a good user experience with the universal set of databinding tools, the patterns contained in this specification have been all been tested with a number of different tools covering a variety of different programming languages and environments.
Implementers of databinding tools may find these patterns useful to represent simple and common place data structures. Ensuring tools recognize at least these simple [XML Schema 1.0] patterns and present them in terms most appropriate to the specific language, database or environment will provide an improved user experience when using databinding tools. It is inappropriate to use this specification to constrain implementation of the [XML Schema 1.0] Recommendation.
The advanced spec "provides a set of commonly used [XML Schema 1.0] patterns known to cause issues with some state of the art databinding implementations."
