[Technical Errata Reported] RFC5261 (3477)

The following errata report has been submitted for RFC5261,
"An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Patch Operations Framework Utilizing XML Path Language (XPath) Selectors".

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You may review the report below and at:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?rfc=5261&eid=3477

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Type: Technical
Reported by: Erik Wilde <[email protected]>

Section: 4.2.2

Original Text
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In XPath 2.0, a "bar" selector
not only matches an unqualified <bar> element, but also matches a
qualified <bar> element that is in scope of a default namespace
declaration.  In contrast, in this specification, a selector without
a prefix only matches one element, and it may match an element with
or without a prefix but only if the namespace it's qualified with (or
none) is an exact match.

Corrected Text
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In XPath 2.0, a "bar" selector matches elements that have the URI of the "default element/type namespace", which is part of an XPath's static context. By setting this URI to the default namespace of the diff document (or leave it empty, if there is none), XPath 2.0's behavior matches the requirements of the previous section.

Notes
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The original text is not easy to understand, but seems to assume that an unprefixed name in XPath 2.0 matches both unprefixed names, and prefixed ones that have the same namespace than the default namespace of the XPath static context. This is not the case: Matching depends on how the "default element/type namespace" of the XPath static context is defined, and then matches either namespace-less elements, or those in the "default element/type namespace", but never both. This context, however, is defined by the XPath itself, not by the document. Thus, it can be set externally and could be set to the diff document's default namespace (if there is one). In that case, XPath 2.0 can be used to evaluate XML Patch selectors.

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RFC5261 (draft-ietf-simple-xml-patch-ops-04)
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Title               : An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Patch Operations Framework Utilizing XML Path Language (XPath) Selectors
Publication Date    : September 2008
Author(s)           : J. Urpalainen
Category            : PROPOSED STANDARD
Source              : SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions
Area                : Real-time Applications and Infrastructure
Stream              : IETF
Verifying Party     : IESG