[QTI] XML namespaces and backwards compatibility

[Steve Lay]

2.1 contained significant new material.  In general, you can expect IMS 
specifications to change namespace when a significant functional change 
is introduced, even if it is backwards compatible.  They use the first 
revision number to indicate such changes, as in 2.0 to 2.1

The namespace won't change for minor revisions, so if they went to 2.1.1 
then that would have the same namespace.

Interestingly, the recent change to the content packaging specification 
hedged somewhat and decided to load the new features onto a new 
namespace but retain the old one for the old elements.  For precisely 
the reasons you suggest.

However, some of the rules for 'running' QTI did change between 2.0 and 
2.1.  They were edge cases but enough to mean that tools need to be 
reviewed and updated (at least to understand the new namespace) as a way 
of indicating that they are compatible.

Steve


Daniel Cassidy wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> The XML namespace used by QTI has changed between version 2.0 and the
> 2.1 draft (from http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsqti_v2p0.xsd to
> http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsqti_v2p1).
> 
> Is this really intentional? XML namespaces generally shouldn't change
> between compatible revisions of a specification. As it stands, QTI 2.0
> will not be compatible with tools that are namespace-aware and expect
> QTI 2.1.
> 
> Dan.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> IMS-QTI mailing list
> IMS-QTI at lists.ucles.org.uk
> http://lists.ucles.org.uk/lists/listinfo/ims-qti