[Wtp-wst-dev] comments about new API design in psychopath engine

[Mukul Gandhi <mukul.gandhi@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,
    I'm addressing this mail
to Jesper as of now, but keeping this discussion on this list to have visibility
to the community.

There's the following bugzilla issue
(Add proper API for xpath2)

https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=320958

The PsychoPath XPath engine's new API
is now available on WTP Source Editing HEAD location. I got a chance now
to look at this new API, and here are few comments please:

<questions for Jesper/>

You've created new interfaces like TypeDefinition,
PrimitiveType and so on. In fact you seem to have created a new native
PsychoPath type system in package org.eclipse.wst.xml.xpath2.api.typesystem.
This is almost conceptually identical to Xerces's type system implementation.

I've few comments about this,

1. I'm very skeptical of this effort
(at least rebranding of the schema type system). You've almost identically
forked Xerces's type system and wrapped it (taking in and taking out the
objects) in another nomenclature. Why don't we stick with Xerces's type
system framework (it's so much time tested).
To my opinion, the new type system framework
introduces unknown risks to the implementation (and an unnecessary learning
curve to people like me).

2. There's a minor comment about the
package naming convention you've chosen for the new API system. You use
package name like, org.eclipse.wst.xml.xpath2.api. This is quite uncommon
convention. An API class or method should be just available in some package,
with public access. The package name should have domain meaning (.api introduces
a technical terminology to the API implementation, which to my opinion
is not a good choice).
Do you intend to keep this terminology
permanently, or you're thinking to change it sometime in future?


Regards,
Mukul