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Re: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar

• To: <xml-dev@l...>, "Joe English" <jenglish@f...>
• Subject: Re: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar
• From: "Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>
• Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 18:34:11 -0400
• References: <07dd01c335e0$a6e6b5f0$b6f5d3ce@s...> <AOEKKCOOGNDOAHCLNEIFKENKDOAA.mike@w...> <200306172155.h5HLth113469@d...> <200306182206.h5IM6H119850@d...>

Joe English wrote:

>
> Jonathan Borden wrote:
> > Joe English wrote:
> > >
> > > What are the real-world use cases of minOccurs and maxOccurs?
> > > In my experience, occurrence constraints specifying anything
> > > other than zero, one, or many are almost always an indication
> > > of a bad design decision somewhere in the system.
> >
> > Number of living parents,
> > grandparents,
> > Number of (one's) kidneys
> > Digits on left hand
> > Chambers in heart...
> > Human chromosomes...
>
> OK, let me rephrase that: what are the real-world use cases
> of minOccurs and maxOccurs _in XML vocabulary definitions_?

Let's assume that we are using XML to describe a real world situation, for
example a genealogical document, a radiology report, chromosome analysis
etc.

>
> And I'm somewhat suspicious of the above examples, too.
> I have a friend with eight grandparents.  Some people have
> six or more digits per hand.  Polysomy is not at all infrequent.

Right. Sometimes we want our models to capture every instance of foo...
other times we want to flag instances for special attention. Chromosomes=46
would be a fine cardinality for "humans with normal chromsome number" etc.

Jonathan

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar
    • From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@c...>
  • Re: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@s...>

• References:
  • Re: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar
    • From: "Jonathan Borden" <jonathan@o...>
  • RE: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar
    • From: "Mike Fitzgerald" <mike@w...>
  • Re: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>
  • Re: modeling, validating and documenting an xml grammar
    • From: Joe English <jenglish@f...>

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