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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: What are Schemas For?
 On Saturday, October 26, 2002, at 08:24 PM, Paul Prescod wrote: > tblanchard@m... wrote: > It is not true that almost nobody can understand schemas/dtds. Sure, > there are some complex corners of XSD but you can easily learn the > _basics_ in a day, and thousands or tens of thousands of people have. Clearly you have access to a much more talented pool of developers than I do. >> ... I'd quit bringing up the schema thing. I don't see it used much >> at all (reading the list of "types" in schema I can see why). And >> what's the benefit of having the schema machine readable? >> Validation? It only provides syntactic validation. You still need >> to do your own semantic validation. > > >> Schema value == 0. > > First, you just said that the schema does syntactic validation. So > that means that the schema's value is greater than zero. It does > something that otherwise _every implementor_ would have to do in code. Sorry, that should have been NET value. I have yet to see a schema developed before a sample document. I have seen them automatically generated by tools. I also think XML Schema is overly complicated and the likelihood of misunderstanding is high given the complexity level. I mean, why is there short, long, int, and byte? Thats a physical representation in what ought to be a logical description. Continued reading of XML schema leaves me with a nasty taste. Clearly the creators of this thing are C or Java programmers with limited theoretical experience and no talent for real abstraction. > Sixth, the existence of schema languages (and XML in general) puts > pressure on vendors to open up and document their file formats. What > was, historically, a moral obligation becomes also a technical one. > >> ... >> Its still a dump of internal data. BTW, I see some ballyhooage about >> MS using XML for Office. You know what MSXML looks like? >> <data7>AB373947F879874983792283787AC5E</data7> > > Your theory is at odds with the reports of people who have reviewed > the product and also at odds with the published claims of Microsoft. My observation is based on the PList formats they store now. The average app stores a few hundred kilobytes of preference data. MS Awful stores tens of megabytes in PList format of the format A39F939302 = B9890982C3E3543... Plus MS has a loooong history of screwing people with their file formats and being something of a roach motel for data. Once in MS format they make it difficult to get it out. >> Or not. The preference is not. And I showed you the pointlessness >> of XMLizing them. They did the XML to please the zealots. > > Or perhaps for compatibility with hundreds of software tools? This "hundreds of tools" is every bit as compelling as the repeated "thousands of programs" available to Windows users - but I notice you mentioned you use a Mac. So clearly you're not swayed by quantity over quality. The XML tools useful for editing PLists is basically zero. PLists are a cheap and convenient data serialization format. Thats it. The XML is strictly a fashion play. Like the porting of WebObjects to Java. Which was also a move driven by fashion. > Maybe it is all _you_ need. But I've been using schemas (was: DTDs) > for more than eight years so please trust me when I say that _I_ need > them. Really?!?!!?! XML 1.0 first edition was published in 1998. Surely DTD's don't predate that. So I'm not buying that statement either. 
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