At 04:26 PM 9/23/2002 -0400, Mike Champion wrote:

> When the original XML 1.0 Rec came out, it was (almost) simple enough
> for any one developer or a small team to implement correctly. A parser
> by a team of hobbyists working in their spare time could be every bit
> as good as Microsoft's, IBM's or Oracle's; indeed, the first XML years
> saw a plentiful crop of parsers. This is in sharp contrast to, say,
> the number of W3C Schema validatiors - I am only aware of one not
> written by a major vendor, and that one is by the Rec editor.

[[ SNIP ]]

> So the big fish rode out DOM Level 2. Some will ride out W3C
> Schema. Those left standing will try XML Query. And then the winner
> will throw away the specs it used to win the battle.

Strange, Ari first implies that the number of implementations is a good 
indication of whether a specification is simple enough, then implies that 
XQuery is not (presumably because it only has around **15 ** 
implementations?). I don't think XML 1.0, DOM Level 1, or XSLT had as many 
implementations as XQuery now has, certainly not at the same stage of 
development. And these implementations are certainly not all from major 
vendors - including some of the better ones.

I like his criterion, though. Implementations are a good indication that a 
spec has enough value to justify its complexity - someone thinks it has 
good bang for the buck.

Jonathan



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