OData V2 clarification requested: Is Property Name a SimpleIdentifier?

[HeikoTheissen]

The OData 2.0 CSDL spec, section 2.1.3 states:

The Property MUST define the Name attribute.

without saying what the value of this attribute can be. (Same for 2.1.4 Navigation Property.)

For other kinds of Element like Entity Type it is more explicit:

EntityType MUST have a Name attribute defined. The Name attribute is of type SimpleIdentifier ...

Are the Names of Property and Navigation Property not required to be a SimpleIdentifier? If not, what can they contain? (For example, they cannot contain characters like / that would interfere with the URL syntax.)

[ralfhandl]

Section 5.3 CSDL Schema 2.0 defines both Name attributes with type="edm:TSimpleIdentifier".

[mikepizzo]

We believe that the property name must be a simple identifier in V2, as in V4, but the OASIS TC does not own the V2 specification.

Christof, can you follow up with the appropriate Microsoft owners of the V2 specification?

Note: in V2, simple identifier does not support underscore (_) as the first character, so we should verify whether V2 intended to support underscore as the first character of property names.

[mikepizzo]

In V2, we should:

1. Decide that property names can start with underscore (_), and add rules about what is/is not allowed in a property name.
2. Decide that a property name can start with an underscore (_), and add rules to say that property name is a simple identifier.

[mikepizzo]

Christof will investigate ownership/maintenance of the OData V2 specification.