XmlNameSpace

XmlNameSpace is the use of NameSpaces in XmlDocuments. An example where people add complexities to ExtensibleMarkupLanguage unnecessarily.

• the Dec2002 article reference from xml.com on XmlRpc appear to have supported my uniformed initial reactions, see that page for link information.
• Another article on the intriguing namespace at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/02/06/deviant.html
• found XmlNameSpace listed as the big 3 problems of XmlProgrammingLanguage by a software lead at Microsoft. He further elaborated problems of XmlNameSpace at http://nothing-more.blogspot.com/2004/10/loving-and-hating-xml-namespaces_21.html
• According to an "XML's growing pains" article at ADTmag by Uche Ogbuji, XmlNameSpace started the whole out-of-control Xml standard proliferation. Implications of its presence helped the justification for the complex XmlSchema, and rest is history.

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Take for example two ReallySimpleSyndication (RSS) feeds.

• http://www.infoworld.com/rss/security.xml
• http://www.indystar.com/index.rss

The first one has no namespace. An XmlNewbie like me was able to read nodes from this document, using Microsoft DocumentObjectModel (DOM invoked in VbClassic referencing MSXML4.0) without problems.

Not true with the second feed. I looked everywhere and came up with the following code

 xmlDoc.setProperty "SelectionNamespaces", strNS

• where strNS has a string of all namespaces used in the file

Hours later and my selectSingleNode method still not working.

Some posts and sites suggest use of Xpath, XSLT, etc. Still I do not have working VbClassic code to parse this document.

I am waiting for a compassionate WikiZen to show me the VbClassic code to help me parse the second xml entry. Thanks. And by the way, tags like PleaseComment and AnswerMe do not seem to be used much, so don't bother with that suggestion.

Thanks for your attention and interest, and maybe help too.

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After writing the above paragraphs, I came across this MS article "How to Specify Namespace when Querying the DOM with XPath" at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;294797

It is starting to look like this -> Use of XPATH is manadatory for XML documents with namespaces

• Can someone confirm the above assertion?

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More Namespace stuff for ExtensibleMarkupLanguage

• W3C namespace document at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/

• see http://groups.google.com/groups?th=bc2cef075294252c for an example of confusion with processing documents with multiple namespaces.

• MSXML4 broke something in namespace processing? see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B828928

I manage to find complexities where I wanted solutions to my simple problem.

The banner I had over my desk read "If you look to see how the system works you will likely discover that it doesn't". I was doing avionics R&D tech_docs at the time. --BenTremblay

• Recommendation for government use of NameSpace. See http://xml.gov/documents/completed/lmi/GS301L1_namespace.pdf

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More confusion

ResourceDirectoryDescriptionLanguage (RDDL) is said to be invented for purposes of resolving the XmlNameSpace access issue. After reading WikiPedia on RDDL and Uniform_Resource_Identifier#Relation_to_XML_namespaces I get a larger dose of confusion.

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Relief for NameSpace confusion

• XML Q&A at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/10/08/qanda.html
• Python tools at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/03/10/python.html, and more help :) at http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/06/30/py-xml.html

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CategoryXml