[bv-dev] Changes in BV XML schemas

Hi all, I'd be interested in your opinion on BVAL-295 [1]. The background is that for BV 1.1 there will be some additions to the BV XML descriptors and thus the corresponding XSD files (e.g. new element "parameter-name-provider" in validation.xml). While implementing method validation within the RI, Hardy and I asked ourselves whether there should be an explicit version attribute in the descriptor root element (similar e.g. to JPA's persistence.xml): <validation-config xmlns="http://jboss.org/xml/ns/javax/validation/configuration" xmlns:xsi="..." xsi:schemaLocation="..." version="1.1"> ... </validation-config> This attribute would have a fixed value defined in the schema, which would allow to unambiguously identify the BV version for which an XML descriptor was written. As long as all schema changes are backwards compatible (meaning any files written against the 1.0 schemas are also valid against the new schemas), there is not really the need for such a version attribute, as always the new schema files could be used for validation. Things look different, though, in case of incompatible changes. Then the schema to validate against could be determined using the version attribute. Personally I feel we should add such an attribute once we really have an incompatible change (maybe in a future BV revision), but maybe there are other opinions? --Gunnar [1] https://hibernate.onjira.com/browse/BVAL-295