Proposed Response to FPDAM Part 1 BR-0001, et al

[Shawn Villaron]

Good afternoon,

Here is my proposed draft response for this series of comments.  Comments welcome, as always.

shawn

WG4 Response

Rejected.

WG4 has conducted extensive research into versioning technology associated with ISO/IEC 29500.  Our conclusions are that, absent a clearly specified, unsupported versioning use case, additional versioning technology should not be added to ISO/IEC 29500.  The potential consequences of introducing a flawed versioning technology clearly outweigh any potential benefits.

Furthermore, ISO/IEC 29500 already supports a number of different mechanisms to enable many versioning scenarios.  Here is a sampling of such mechanisms:


*         XML Namespaces - Provides for "major" version increments that are not designed to be backward compatible with existing implementations.

*         Extension Lists - Provides for adding orthogonal data in predefined locations within the XML.  See Part 1.

*         Parts - Provides for adding entirely new payloads into the file container.  See Part 2.

*         Alternative Content Blocks - Provides for adding multiple renditions anywhere in the XML.  See Part 3.

*         Ignorable Namespaces - Provides for adding orthogonal data anywhere in the XML.  See Part 3.

Given these, and other, mechanisms currently provided for in ISO/IEC 29500, and that such mechanisms provide support for the known versioning use cases, WG4 does not believe we need a new versioning technology.  We continue to evaluate new versioning-related use cases, and in the event we find one which cannot be supported by existing versioning technologies, we will consider adding additional versioning technology at that time.


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