"David RR Webber - XML ebusiness" <> writes:
>
> I think you will find that your assertion at bottom
> on namespaces is slightly misleading.
I don't think so :-).
> We've been grappling with this exact same issue over in the
> CAM TC. Here's what happens - if the XML content has a
> default namespace declaration in it - then the XPath parser
> will demand prefixes, even if you don't use them!
>
> This is an ugly bug and side-effect.
That's not a bug nor a side-effect. That's what namespaces
are .. if you use a default namespace that specifically means
that unqualified names are qualified by that namespace.
Being prefixed or not has nothing to do with it ..
> The only recourse we have is to just warn people - do
> not use namespace declarations - unless you absolutely
> need them.
I agree default namespaces do confuse people.
> There are very few instances where you really need
> namespaces in XML streams - paradoxically one is
> CAM templates - since they have embedded markup
> instructions to the CAM processor - and of course
> these need to be discarded from the overall content
> processing.
>
> Namespaces and their side-effects are something
> that XML is going to have to live with for a longwhile
> downstream.
>
> Fortunately tools like CAM remove the need to use
> namespaces in business transaction documents -
> therefore making their processing consistent and
> reliable. Simple plain-vanilla XML is my preference
> everytime.
I disagree totally .. namespaces are a critical feature of
XML that makes XML scalable. However, for a reason that I'm
yet to understand, a lot of poeple confuse the presence or
absence of a namespace with that of a prefix. So as a result
namespaces have a "complex" bit associated with them .. but
I personally don't agree with that all.
Sanjiva.
