XML Catalogs V1.1 is an OASIS Standard.
I'm also happy to report that my implementation of XML Catalog support, currently part of the xml-commons project at Apache, will ship as a standard part of the next Java™ release.
You've got a standard. You've got an implementation. What are you waiting for? I've been using catalogs for at least ten years, and XML Catalogs for at least five, so really, you can start deploying them today.
Great news. I use XML catalogs for years and I love it. I even got a prototype implementation for .NET which works for some my stuff. But full-blown XML Catalogs implementation for .NET is still deep down my todo list, cause I don't see much user requests. And I really wonder why.
As a matter of interest XML Editor in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 supports so-called "schema catalog files" which can be used to point to schema locations other than Visual Studio's own schema cache directory. Every other XML editor on this planet solves URI resolving problem with XML Catalogs, but obviously not Microsoft's one. What's worse - brand new XML Editor in Visual Studio 2005 provides no extensibility points for third-parties for resolving XML resources in a custom way. That sucks. (Hey, that's a third post in a row where I use this highly technical term "suck", hmmm :)
Anyway, if you personally need XML Catalogs for .NET platform - just drop me a line, I want to gather some user requests.
Well, I'd agree that for VS XML Editor's catalog files limited functionality XML Catalogs sounds like overkill.
XML Catalogs are probably not very suited for sharing as they usually defined for a specific environment, e.g. on my machine I store Docbook stuff at d:\docbook and I want all references to docbook dtds, schemas etc to be resolved to d:\docbook instead of "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/...". XML Catalogs are all about helping here if only XML tools I'm using support them.
I don't have an opinion on OASIS catalogs, but I guess I need to form one given my job description :-) I must admit that at first glance the OASIS catalog format looks like overkill for XML editor catalog files. What am I missing?
Also, are there interoperability use cases for catalog files? The standards that we tend to support are those that govern real world data interoperability. Do people tend to exchange catalog files?
But anyway, we do encourage people in the community to implement specs that don't meet the business case bar for Microsoft itself. The point about extensibility points is well-taken, maybe we can do that ....
XML Catalogs for .NET 2.0 - highly desirable.