Namespace for the document fragment representing a part

Title: Namespace for the document fragment representing a part

During today's discussion of item 39, somebody brought up the issue of which namespace is associated with the document fragment representing a part. This is, of course, relevant to writing path expressions in query attributes found in assignments and property aliases declarations.

I imagine this should be an issue only in the case where the part is defined in terms of a type. (If the part is defined in terms of an element, I would assume the namespace should be the same as the element's namespace).

In the case the part is defined in terms of a type, I would follow what the WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 says in section 5.6.20, Namespace for Part Accessors: 

"R2735 A MESSAGE described with an rpc-literal binding MUST place the part accessor elements for parameters and return value in no namespace".

(See also the example in the following section 5.6.21).

In other words, I would follow the same direction and say that the top element of a document fragment representing a part defined in terms of a type does not belong to any namespace.

Ugo