New appinfo for attribute augmentation

[iamdrscott]

New appinfo for attribute augmentation

An augmentation in a reference schema document expresses an opinion. For example, in the opinion of the Justice domain, j:EducationTotalYearsText is a possibly useful property for nc:EducationType. An augmentation doesn't have real effect until a message designer selects it for his subset and puts it into a message schema.

Suppose you are writing a reference schema document and want to say that element Bar is a possibly useful property in some FooType. Then you declare an element substitutable for FooAugmentationPoint. Simple.

Suppose you are writing a reference schema document and want to say that attribute bar is a possibly useful property in some FooType. Now what do you do? Umm… well, nothing, at present. There is no way to do it. Attribute augmentations take effect in the augmented schema document; for example, line 9 in this niem-core.xsd fragment:

01 <xs:complexType name="EducationType">
02   <xs:complexContent>
03     <xs:extension base="structures:ObjectType">
04       <xs:sequence>
05         <xs:element ref="nc:EducationDescriptionText" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
06         <xs:element ref="nc:EducationInProgressIndicator" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
07         <xs:element ref="nc:EducationAugmentationPoint" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
08       </xs:sequence>
09       <xs:attribute ref="my:privacyText" appinfo:augmentingNamespace="http://example.com/N6AugEx/1.0/"/>
10     </xs:extension>
11   </xs:complexContent>
12 </xs:complexType>

We need a new bit of appinfo to fill this gap. It goes into the augmenting schema document, and looks like this:

<xs:annotation>
  <xs:appinfo>
    <appinfo:AttributeAugmentation augmented="nc:EducationType" attribute="my:privacyText"/>
  </xs:appinfo>
</xs:annotation>

The declaration in appinfo.xsd looks like this:

<xs:element name="AttributeAugmentation">
  <xs:annotation>
    <xs:documentation>A declaration of a component augmented with an attribute.</xs:documentation>
  </xs:annotation>
  <xs:complexType>
    <xs:attribute name="augmented" type="xs:QName"/>
    <xs:attribute name="attribute" type="xs:QName"/>
  </xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

I have modified the augmentation examples in the ntac-admin repo accordingly. Look at:

• Augmenting complex content with an attribute (04-AugCCWithA)
• Augmenting simple content with an attribute (05-AugSCWithA)

[cdmgtri]

This is mainly targeted for domains using attribute augmentation for Core or another domain, right? A local reference model or an IEPD would just plug in the attribute directly into the original type in the subset.

Should augmented be augmentedType instead? Or augmentatedTypeName and attributeName? I know the name of the deprecated attribute and the local terminology attributes aren't conformant (and don't have to be), but I think the other components in the appinfo namespace are. Or maybe it doesn't matter for a utility namespace.

[iamdrscott]

I think you are correct: an extension schema in a message specifiction, one not intended for reuse, doesn't really need this appinfo. Should we eat our own dogfood with naming conventions in appinfo? Let the NTAC decide!