[mapserver-dev] Use of XML namespace URIs in MapServer

[Bart van den Eijnden (OSGIS)]

Hi Daniel,

I would leave it as it is. As you say it does not need to point to 
anything, it's a URI.

For instance the OpenLayers.Format.GML has it as its default value:

OpenLayers.Format.GML = OpenLayers.Class(OpenLayers.Format.XML, {
   
    /*
     * APIProperty: featureNS
     * {String} Namespace used for feature attributes.  Default is
     *     "http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/mapserver".
     */
    featureNS: "http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/mapserver",

I am sure there are more out there ....

Best regards,
Bart

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Ticket http://trac.osgeo.org/mapserver/ticket/3142 raises an issue 
> about the default namespace URI used by MapServer which is currently 
> http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/mapserver and apparently this breaks some 
> apps because this URL does not resolve to anything. Docs about XML 
> seem to say that the namespace URI does not absolutely have to resolve 
> to anything, so we are still waiting to hear from the reporter which 
> apps that breaks.
>
> Regardless, I thought we could simply change the default to 
> http://www.mapserver.org/mapserver but Tom wrote that some parsers 
> rely on the namespace value and this could cause a backwards 
> compatibility issue.
>
> To avoid bloating the ticket with a long discussion we decided to move 
> it here to try to come up with a plan for resolution for the next beta 
> (next week).
>
> Here are a my questions/concerns:
>
> - I'd be interested to hear more from XML gurus about the real impact 
> of changing the default namespace URI from 
> http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/mapserver to
> http://www.mapserver.org/mapserver, even if it's just for consistency 
> with our current Internet domain name.
>
> - While checking docs on namespaces a bit, I saw several examples that 
> seem to use a different/unique URL path for different XML schemas. 
> Should we not do the same, e.g. http://www.mapserver.org/wms, 
> http://www.mapserver.org/xmlmapfile, etc?
>
> Daniel


-- 
Bart van den Eijnden
OSGIS, Open Source GIS
bartvde at osgis.nl
http://www.osgis.nl