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1/27/2002 6:33:35 PM, John Cowan <cowan@m...> wrote:

>Ah, that's where architectural forms come in.  They say "Mark up
>your XML document further by adding some attributes, so that
>we can figure out that what you mean by FOO is what we mean by BAR."

Yes, I just read the descriptions of architectural forms on David 
Megginson's page, and had a bit of a "scales falling from the eyes" 
experience! 

Anyway ... AF, namespaces, XSLT ... or procedural code for that 
matter ... there are multiple ways to be liberal in accepting FOO 
tags rather than stricting insisting on BAR tags. 

As for Paul Prescod's comment:

> How will you write software to verify that the information 
> you need is in there? Isn't the easiest way just to 
> check it against the schema? 

If I can use AF, XSLT, or procedural code to map various possible 
element/attribute FOOs to my BARs and I don't care how much extra 
tags and verbiage the order contains, nor whether the sender thinks 
the "stock number" is a string or an integer, than I can extract the 
information I need.  Furthermore, if my business process thinks that 
a "valid" order is 
a) from an established customer 
b) for a product that is listed in our catalog, 
c) the ordered product is currently in stock, and 
d) the customer's credit is sufficient to cover the price; 
then an XML schema won't help me "validate" it.



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