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RE: loosely and tightly coupled systems and type annotation

• To: 'Eric van der Vlist' <vdv@d...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: loosely and tightly coupled systems and type annotation
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Fri, 12 Jul 2002 08:35:53 -0500

Nor should an application be forbidden to tightly couple 
using XML.  An application can't require this of
of XML.   The choice should be made based on the requirements 
of the application.  So why the controversy over what is 
the most basic and easily understood aspects of markup 
and markup systems?

It all comes down to one's interpretation of "What Is XML?" 
Those who religiously, politically, or ambitiously lump 
XML application frameworks into "requirements for XML" 
do a disservice and commit a technical blunder.  Teaching 
this in the universities is an academic conceit.  

XML core is simply XML 1.0:  FULL STOP.  Not, 
XSLT, not XSD, not namespaces, not RELAX NG, 
not .NET, and certainly not SVG, XHTML, and so forth.

As long as that core remains untouched, all of the debates 
on loose and tight coupling, schemas, strong typing vs 
lexical and structural named types, are simply and 
only choices of the application engineer.  While in 
the context of designing an application, it can be 
convenient to blur these distinctions, at the strictest 
levels of definition, the following hold:

o  Element != object
o  Attribute != field
o  Elements and attributes are not rows and columns
o  Namespaces are just flags
o  XML systems != The Web
o  The Web != The Internet

XSLT is an application language.  XHTML is an application 
language.  SVG is an application language.  .NET is an 
application framework.  The Web is a system of systems 
for assigning, persisting and resolving identity properties 
to representations of entities known as resources. 

These are easy ideas made complicated by the insistence 
that the WWW become an application framework evermore 
tightly bound to interlocking specifications to meet the 
requirements of blind interoperability for systems 
that identify and retrieve resource representations.  

Understand clearly that these are not requirements of XML; 
XML is an enabler for these requirements, not their source.

Do what you will with these, but the originator 
is responsible for selling ideas and systems, and 
the term "sell" is deliberate.   Don't consider 
the work a "standard" until it is adopted as such, 
and then remember that the social behavior of adopting 
standards is predicated on willingness based on perceived 
value, not the source.   Technical groupies are this 
century's most pathetic beings.

len


From: Eric van der Vlist [mailto:vdv@d...]

If you don't want to read yet another rant against *imposing* type
annotation in XML please delete...

Thinking again and again on what's the difference between loosely and
tightly coupled systems and how this apply to XML...

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: loosely and tightly coupled systems and type annotation
    • From: Marcus Carr <mcarr@a...>
  • RE: loosely and tightly coupled systems and type annota tion
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>
  • RE: loosely and tightly coupled systems and type annotation
    • From: Eric van der Vlist <vdv@d...>

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