At long last, the W3C has completed its process and put the "Recommendation" imprimatur on xml:id Version 1.0.  xml:id addresses a long-standing problem in XML - that identification of elements (subresources) within an XML document requires a separate description (DTD, XML Schema, at least fragmentary) of the content model.  While description is often useful, one of the primary advantages of XML over its predecessors is that no description is necessary to parse an XML document, and consequently few processes do.

As a result, the common case of pointing into an XML document (see XPointer) has required the uncommon step of finding and processing the documents description.  People have been working around this problem for years in various hacky ways.  xml:id provides a convention, and associated processing semantics, which solves this problem.

It will take a while for xml:id to be adopted widely, but getting its "Rec" stamp is an important milestone in that journey, and should give confidence to users that this mechanism is worth considering, and to vendors that this mechanism is stable and thoroughly peer reviewed.

My part in the xml:id story is rather modest, despite my credit as an author - I was part of the XML Core Working Group when xml:id was conceived, helping write the requirements and an initial draft.  As Microsoft dropped its membership in the group I wasn’t active in the long and tedious process of moving the specification to its conclusion, and full credit must go to Norm Walsh and Paul Grosso (co-chairs) and the rest of the Working Group in their patience and diligence.

Here’s hoping for a long and bright future for xml:id!