I guess one way is with a variable

<var name="doc1" lg="xpath20">doc("http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/34247/ubl-ta-%20draft-0-61.xml")</var> ... <testAssertionRef>$doc1."Test Assertions for Universal Business Language v2 Invoice Calculation Model".invoice-calculation-model-001.INVTAX001</testAssertionRef>

but what about the testAssertionRef here - it has to combine two syntaxes - XPath for the variable with our own point notation for the IDs.

A pure XPath way would be to not use the point notation but some XPath equivalent:

something like

<testAssertionRef lg="xpath20">$doc1//*[local-name(.)='testAssertionSet']/@id='invoice-calculation-model-001'/*[local-name(.)='testAssertion']/@id='INVTAX001'</testAssertionRef>

or even, without the variable

<testAssertionRef lg="xpath20">doc("http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/34247/ubl-ta-%20draft-0-61.xml")//*[local-name(.)='testAssertionSet']/@id='invoice-calculation-model-001'/*[local-name(.)='testAssertion']/@id='INVTAX001'</testAssertionRef>

but it's no where near as neat as the point-separated ref notation.

If we include the point notation built in to the markup (not everyone is familiar with XPath nor should have to be), like packages notation in Java, then maybe we need a special reference element (a bit like a special variable element):

<ref
url='http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/34247/ubl-ta-%20draft-0-61.xml' name='ref1'/>

or

<ref
name='ref1'>http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/34247/ubl-ta-%20draft-0-61.xml</ref>

(the latter assuming more, eg that the ref is navigable using usual methods like trying as a filepath/filename then trying as a url or that a filepath/filename will always be presented as a file:/// url which leaves less scope for relative paths)

Then the TA ref is something like:

<testAssertionRef>$ref1."Test Assertions for Universal Business Language v2 Invoice Calculation Model".invoice-calculation-model-001.INVTAX001</testAssertionRef>

and we might want to have a dot dot notation (like the '//' in XPath) to show a more indefinite child relationship (any child or granchild) to avoid something like that cumbersome first ID in my example

<testAssertionRef>$ref1..invoice-calculation-model-001.INVTAX001</testAssertionRef>

There are weaknesses

1. having to use BNF or the like to define this notation formally 2. having to have reservced characters e.g. '$' and '.' (and '..') which    realistically could appear in the IDs

2. could be gotten around specifying an escape character like '\'

1. may just be essential extra work in the spec - anyone any good at BNF? :-)

XPath binding profile tools would just need to support both methods if the latter point notation is part of the TAML spec, I guess. That presumably applies to any profile and may be quite an overhead. Quite powerful to have it though.

2009/9/18 Kevin Looney <Kevi...@sun.com>: