I am not even remotely suggesting that anyone would implement the holdings 
standard with nothing but the schema.   We're working on a solution to this.

--Ray


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Houghton,Andrew" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:26 AM
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Open, public standards v. pay per view standards and 
usage


>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Ross Singer
>> Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:07 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Open, public standards v. pay per view
>> standards and usage
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Ray Denenberg, Library of
>> Congress<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> > Ross, if you're talking about the ISO 20775 xml schema:
>> > http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso20775/ISOholdings_V1.0.xsd
>> >
>> > It's free.
>>
>> It's also not a spec, it's a schema.  If the expectation is that
>> people are actually going to adopt a standard from merely looking at
>> an .xsd, my prediction is that this will go nowhere.
>>
>> I mean, I'm wrong a lot, but I feel pretty good about this reading
>> from my crystal ball.
>
> Not saying you're wrong Ross, but it depends.  People adopted MARC-XML
> by looking at the .xsd without an actual specification.  Granted it's
> not a complicated schema however, and there already existed the "MARC 21
> Specifications for Record Structure, Character Sets, and Exchange Media"
> so it wasn't a big leap to adopt MARC-XML, IMHO.
>
> Generally I agree with your conclusion Ross. It's difficult for people
> to just pick up an .xsd and understand what the semantics are for each
> element and attribute in the schema and which element(s) should be used
> for the document element.  This is mitigated by annotations in the .xsd
> for the elements and attributes and also mitigated by using the Russian
> doll schema approach, that MARC-XML uses, so it's clear what elements
> can be used for the document element.  Also tools like XMLSpy that
> provide a graphical representation of the .xsd can provide insights
> into how the schema should be used.
>
> But these are a lot of if this and that was done, and you have appropriate
> tools.  A freely available specification detailing each element and
> attribute along with their semantics is much better for understanding a
> schema than the schema itself, but obviously the schema is the definitive
> authority when it comes to generating conforming instance documents.
>
>
> Andy.