I laughed out loud when I read Rick Jeliffe’s Snow Season in SchemaLand, about the W3C XML Schema User Experiences Workshop which I attended on behalf of the W3C Web Services Description Working Group.  While I disagree strongly with Rick’s conclusion (start over on XML Schema), I do agree with many of his general points about independent review.  Even though IMO independent review wasn’t the primary purpose of the workshop, I observed a substantial undercurrent of discontent with the direction the XML Schema WG is taking - continuing to pursue XML Schema 1.1 to the exclusion of needed work to improve the interoperability situation surrounding XML Schema 1.0.

There was significant evidence at the workshop that the direction was wrong - namely of 31 participants, 22/23 favored a focus on errata/test suite, while only 11 (including IIRC most of the XML Schema WG membership but not including many of the major vendors) favored finishing XML Schema 1.1.

It’s therefore a bit baffling to see the chair’s report summarize this data as "only weak support, however, for proposals to drop XML Schema 1.1 from the Working Group’s task list."  Maybe that qualifies as a snow job, since the clearest translation of that data would seem to be something like "only weak (minority) support for continuing to work on XML Schema 1.1."  More likely it’s wishful thinking.

I think there’s a real possibility XML Schema 1.1 will be ignored by the marketplace, weakening the W3C’s valuable Recommendation brand.  It’s certainly worth investing some honest self-reflection in considering the possibility.

As always, these opinions are my own and not necessarily those of my employer.