RE: More chaos coming down the pike

Mike Spreitzer (spreitze@parc.xerox.com)
Mon, 23 Aug 1999 22:50:21 PDT


Thanks for the reply.

I didn't notice surjection implicitly stated as a goal in
<http://java.sun.com/aboutJava/communityprocess/jsr/jsr_031_xmld.html>.
The brief discussion of possible mappings ("A variety of schema-translation
strategies are possible...") suggests that non-surjective mappings are
contemplated (each of the two mentioned mapping approaches embodies a
certain stylized --- not fully general --- way of using Java).

I understand that the discussion paper is only a strawman intended to kick
off the discussion. Sorry if my text wasn't entirely clear on that. It's
also not entirely clear on the OMG side either. The perils of late-night
writing, sigh.

On the issue of alternate serializations, I guess I also failed to make it
clear that I'm talking about multiple serializations for a given object.
Multiple Inheritance among Java classes won't (by itself) get that. Also,
I agree that there's value in declaring a *default* serialization --- I
just think there's also value in being able to use non-default
serializations too.

I plan to update my list of mappings at least by writing down new mappings
as I encounter them.

Mike

PS: My tools tell me that "distributedcoaltion.org" is not a valid domain
name.