[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

dtd, schema vs RDF

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: dtd, schema vs RDF
• From: olivier.dameron@g...
• Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 16:57:00 +0200 (MEST)

Dear xml-devers,

   I have been playing with XML for a couple of years, but devoted most of
my time in defining what I needed to represent. Now that my ideas are
somewhat
clearer, it looks like it is time to worry about how to represent its
structure.
The main goal is to convey and explicit the semantic behind it for sharing.
Validation can be considered as a side effect.
Therefore, I am considering wether to use DTD or schemas (and if so, w3c or
RNG).
   At least two threads this week tackled this subject, but I feel a little
overwhelmed and need a more practical point of view.
I know this kind of discussions is flame-prone, and I would like to have
your opinion about the schema features that are not handled
by DTD, and why do you need them ?


It seems that if you feel the need to define a type for your
elements/attributes, then your decomposition is too weak. To keep up with
the famous 'date'
example, if you don't feel comfortable with <date>june 12 2002</date> and
need to specify a type for it, then maybe you'd rather have <date><year
calendar="gregorian">2002</year><month>6</month><day>12</day><hour
timeZone="GMT">19</hour><minute>24</minute></date>.

<question>Is this correct ?</question>

I  also think it is dangerous to allow having elements with the same name,
but which structure may vary depending on its ancestors. For this kind of
problems, namespaces provide adequate solution. Am I missing something ?

<question>Do you use any schema feature that cannot be handled with a DTD
?</question>

<question>Are this features available for both w3c and RNG, or only one of
them ?</question>

<question>Eventually, wouldn't RDF be more appropriated to convey the
semantic ?</question>

Best regards,
Olivier Dameron.

-- 
GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
http://www.gmx.net

• Prev by Date: Lightning Talks at Open Source Conference
• Next by Date: DSDL: use cases: namespace declaration notation
• Previous by thread: Lightning Talks at Open Source Conference
• Next by thread: CLaRK System - an XML-based System for Corpora Development
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread