>> If you do, do you like it?
>
>Uh, I don't know. I think the current restriction is satisfactory at
>least in the sense that it allows most of the grammars in practice,
>which I think is the most important thing.
I don't think you have spoken with database people. When I gave a talk
at WebDB, somebody asked about identity constraints in RELAX NG. When I
said that RELAX NG does not have multi-part keys, he said that such
identity constraints will not make the database community happy. Nobody in
the room disagreed.
Let's face it. The current spec is already very unsatisfactory for database
guys. We will eventually need a different spec for identity constraints. If
our mechanism is as simple as ID/IDREF/IDREFS of DTDs, we can say that it is
only for compatibility with DTDs. If our key/keyRef is extremely complicated,
we cannot say so.
>But at the same, it is true that 7.4 is by far the most complex section
>in the spec, probably partly because many concepts are introduced one
>after another so rapidly that it's hard to chew them up.
Good. We have agreed that 7.4 is extremely complicated. I think that the reason
is generalization of ad-hocness rather than the presentation.
Cheers,
Makoto
