International Symposium on Versioning XML Vocabularies and Systems
Monday August 11, 2008 Hotel Europa, Montréal, Canada
A one-day discussion of issues relating to revision,
extension,
variation,
and managing change in XML vocabularies
Things change; new concepts come into being;
sometimes things turn out to be different from how we thought they
were.
So sometimes we decide to revise
our formerly perfect XML systems.
As a result:
- new
terms appear in our tag sets
- existing vocabularies are revised at both coarse and
fine grain, either
to fix bugs or to allow
concepts to mutate semantically
- parts of the vocabulary are deleted or deprecated
- different flavors of the same vocabulary arise
- schemas proliferate and
document collections become heterogeneous
All this movement leaves us with many critical questions: Should all
changes be backwards-compatible so that no users of the current system
are inconvenienced? Do we ignore current users and march boldly into a
new and incompatible world? Do we need forward compatibility? Knowing
that users have extended our vocabulary, how do we version the core
out from under them? Does it matter which schema language you are
using, or all we all in the same boat?
Schedule
Three
presentations explore the overall versioning problem and
provide a review of conceptual models and terminology. Three
presentations explore live cases:
the evolution of HTML by a standards development organization,
the user-driven revision of a tag set for journal
articles, and the problem of managing version changes across
multiple vocabularies and numerous user groups in a large organization.
The early afternoon presents systems and
methods for attacking versioning problems. The late afternoon will be
a Hyde Park Speaker‘s Corner, with open-mike signups available for
attendee participation. We cap the day with a closing wrap-up.
Hyde Park Speaker‘s Corner
At any time during the day,
Symposium attendees
can submit mini-proposals
for five minute time-slots;
these five-minute presentations will be given during
the “Hyde Park Speaker‘s Corner”
session in the afternoon. Speakers
will be encouraged to divide
their five minutes into two parts: three minutes during which they
may state opinions, preferences, or experiences relating to
versioning, and two minutes during which the other attendees may
react. If there are more proposals than can be accommodated,
proposals from people who have not
already spoken will be preferred,
and random selections from the remaining proposals will be made.
As at the “Speaker‘s Corner” in London‘s Hyde Park, there will be
virtually no restrictions on allowed content. However, the
Versioning Symposium‘s organizers will terminate presentations
that are not related to versioning, that are disrespectful of
others or their points of view, or that are still incomplete after
five minutes have elapsed.
There is nothing so practical as a good theory
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