#OAGIS X reviewed - part 1
This is part one of a review of OAGIS X release candidate 1 from OAGi. (see part 2)
The first part that is crucial to understand is that the semantics remain intact. Indeed version X is a non-backwardly compatible major release. So one might have concerns about changing data models. However, at the high level, there was not any kind of large scale re-modeling of the data models on the nouns, bods, or verbs. This will be comforting to those who have invested in previous version of OAGIS and who may be worried about what has been done with a new release. In fact, I was able to create a valid xml instance document from a valid 9.4 version document without much work.
When comparing instance documents, the first area for change you'll notice is in attributes. Specifically around codes and identifiers. For example, the LogicalID element in version 9.4 looks like this:
<LogicalID
schemeID=""
schemeAgencyID=""
schemeVersionID=""
schemeName=""
schemeAgencyName=""
schemeURI=""
schemeDataURI=""
></LogicalID>
Whereas the X version is streamlined looking like this:
<LogicalID
schemeID=""
schemeAgencyID=""
schemeVersionID=""
></LogicalID>
This effectively pushes values for agency name and such into basically a lookup table. Not an unreasonable approach. Generally I've not seen those attributes being used anyway. So this simplification is good. Certainly when generating sample documents or dealing with the schema as a data model, the existence of all these extra attributes was often cumbersome. And similarly to this ID, the same streamlining was done on codes as well. Strike one for simplification.
The second thing you might notice is the base namespace is the same. "http://www.openapplications.org/oagis/9" is still the default namespace in BODs. I haven't checked with the folks at OAGi about whether this should be "10" instead of "9" but I'll assume that by the time the bundle is released in the production version this would be changed. In the short term though, this makes working between 9.4 and X that much easier (or harder in some cases). I've kept them separate and so don't have collision problems, but if they must coexist you'll need to manage that carefully. It is a candidate release.
I've got more to say so I'll return and update you on this important new release of OAGIS.
(see part 2)
The first part that is crucial to understand is that the semantics remain intact. Indeed version X is a non-backwardly compatible major release. So one might have concerns about changing data models. However, at the high level, there was not any kind of large scale re-modeling of the data models on the nouns, bods, or verbs. This will be comforting to those who have invested in previous version of OAGIS and who may be worried about what has been done with a new release. In fact, I was able to create a valid xml instance document from a valid 9.4 version document without much work.
When comparing instance documents, the first area for change you'll notice is in attributes. Specifically around codes and identifiers. For example, the LogicalID element in version 9.4 looks like this:
<LogicalID
schemeID=""
schemeAgencyID=""
schemeVersionID=""
schemeName=""
schemeAgencyName=""
schemeURI=""
schemeDataURI=""
></LogicalID>
Whereas the X version is streamlined looking like this:
<LogicalID
schemeID=""
schemeAgencyID=""
schemeVersionID=""
></LogicalID>
This effectively pushes values for agency name and such into basically a lookup table. Not an unreasonable approach. Generally I've not seen those attributes being used anyway. So this simplification is good. Certainly when generating sample documents or dealing with the schema as a data model, the existence of all these extra attributes was often cumbersome. And similarly to this ID, the same streamlining was done on codes as well. Strike one for simplification.
The second thing you might notice is the base namespace is the same. "http://www.openapplications.org/oagis/9" is still the default namespace in BODs. I haven't checked with the folks at OAGi about whether this should be "10" instead of "9" but I'll assume that by the time the bundle is released in the production version this would be changed. In the short term though, this makes working between 9.4 and X that much easier (or harder in some cases). I've kept them separate and so don't have collision problems, but if they must coexist you'll need to manage that carefully. It is a candidate release.
I've got more to say so I'll return and update you on this important new release of OAGIS.
(see part 2)
posted by Paul at
8:54 AM
