[Digir-dev] nillable

[Robert A. M. <ra...@cs...>]

The Schema Readme document carrying
$Id: schemaReadme.html,v 1.6 2002/05/22 15:48:38 peejinator Exp $
asserts that among the necessary properties of a federation schema is 
that data elements must be nillable. I can not see why the digir.xsd 
implies this and would welcome an explanation. (An explanation of why 
the Schema implies this is the case, not an explanation of the benefits 
of nillable elements, which is made quite clear in the W3 Schema Primer).

If in fact the Schema does not imply this, I'd also like to know if this 
and the contents of the section "Using the DiGIR Schema to create a 
Federation (content) schema" are (a)an implicit or explicit, and 
enforced, requirement on federation schemas to be handled by the current 
portal code (b)an implicit or explicit requirement on federation schemas 
to be handled by arbitrary clients. Or do they just constitute a best 
practices statement?


-- 
Robert A. Morris
Professor of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
phone (+1)617 287 6466