SMG: an import of the node2 format. Because of the significant effort the task is postponed for next year probably.

For me it is open question if this work makes sense. My concern is if NodeSet2 schema is really useful at design time. I have no doubts that it will work at implementation and run-time when actually it represents Address Space instance, but not Information Model.
At design time we need Information Model representation, which meets the following:

1. It is readable, so it should be possible to create it manually (without any special tool)
2. The modification should be easily tractable by any diff tool – the text sequence is important (xml does not meet this)
3. The representation should be redundant to improve the validation process;
4. The representation may contain syntax and sematic error and still should be usable.
5. TBD

ModelDesign.xsd schema also does not meet the above mentioned requirements but it is much closer. Anyway systematic analysis must be undertaken before any final decision, especially because it is heavy work and breaking feature for other existing tools.

This feature belongs on the .NET open source code base as this is the only place such a feature would be used. What is really needed is .NET code generation from NodeSet2 files.