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RE: Request for a poll: (was RE: Datatypes vs anarchy)

• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• To: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>, xml-dev <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 09:00:12 -0600

I made a comment very early based on my experience in the 
MID and some earlier SGML projects that trying 
to make XML or any other markup solution into 
an object-oriented programming language was 
a bad idea.  We get nothing we can't already 
do with the programming language, and we make 
the markup too heavy for its most useful applications. 

So, based on your paper, which I found to be 
excellent by the way, what would you take out 
based on modeling data objects (all XML is) 
to pass to object models?

This problem bedeviled VRML/X3D.  We found 
schema actually had too few datatypes (arrays) 
so ended up using simpleTypes in some 
really ugly ways.  On the other hand, the 
abstract types were a much better fit than 
parameter entities for modeling the 
node abstractions of VRML97.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Ronald Bourret [mailto:rpbourret@r...]
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 10:00 PM
To: xml-dev
Subject: Re: Request for a poll: (was RE: Datatypes vs anarchy)


Michael Brennan wrote:
> 
> I think most of the complaints on this list have been that it tried to do
> too much. And yet you also find people posting links to white papers that
> talk about mapping UML models and relational database schemas into XML
> Schema, so there are clearly people out there that are leveraging that
> greater complexity. Also, it's fair to ask why it tries to do too much. I
> did not participate in the schema WG, so I can't really speak to that, but
I
> suspect that complexity stems from the fact that many of the participants
> pushed for features they wanted to see in the spec (so they could do
things
> like map UML models and relational database schemas into XML Schema
without
> a great loss in fidelity of the model in the process).

As somebody who wrote a paper about mapping the other way (XML schemas
to object and database schemas) I can plainly say that I still wish for
less. I wrote the paper because I feel that, regardless of my personal
opinion, XML schemas offer enough useful functionality and are usable
enough that my customers are likely to use them, which means that I need
to support them.

By the way, XML schemas seem to be most useful for defining XML
structures -- the mappings that I could figure out to object and
database schemas get pretty shaky in places. I'm still not sure if this
is due to the schema language itself or the inherent mismatches between
XML, objects, and databases. Certainly the problem is not as easy as it
looks.

-- 
Ronald Bourret
Programming, Writing, and Training
XML, Databases, and Schemas
http://www.rpbourret.com

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