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RE: Schema, BNF and parsing

• To: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: Schema, BNF and parsing
• From: Andrew Jeavons <apj@a...>
• Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 13:26:01 -0500
• In-reply-to: <E1D7HMw-000894-00@u...>
• References: <6.2.0.14.2.20050304124119.048582a0@m...><E1D7HMw-000894-00@u...>

At 01:17 PM 3/4/2005, Michael Kay wrote:
>If the stylesheet is simply checking against a grammar, then you would
>certainly be better off using a grammar-based validator. There are
>essentially three candidates: DTDs, XML Schema, and RelaxNG. Which you
>choose depends on all sorts of factors, personal, political and technical.
>
>It might well be the case, of course, that your stylesheet is doing checks
>that can't be described simply in a grammar.

It is doing checks that can't be easily described in the schema, which is 
what worries me...

thanks
andrew

>Michael Kay
>http://www.saxonica.com/
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Andrew Jeavons [mailto:apj@a...]
> > Sent: 04 March 2005 17:50
> > To: xml-dev@l...
> > Subject:  Schema, BNF and parsing
> >
> > First apologies if this is OT for this list or contains egregious
> > assumptions and statements....I am not by any means a XML expert.
> >
> > I have recently started working with a product which uses XML as the
> > definition framework. We have a XML (QML we call it) which
> > describes how to ask questions. So QML has elements like "text", "sub
> > question" and so on. We develop scripts which are validated
> > for syntactic
> > validity and then passed to an execution engine. Of course
> > the QML written
> > has to conform to the schema defined. As far as I can currently work
> > out we use a 2666 line XLST script to check QML. QML is not a complex
> > "language", it reminds me of IBM MVS JCL - 5 verbs and 200
> > qualifiers for
> > the verbs.
> > 2666 lines of anything to check this "language" seems extreme. I have
> > written parsers using YACC in the past and it seems to me for
> > numerous
> > reasons using
> > some sort of BNF/EBNF defined grammer and Bison/YACC type
> > tools will be
> > VASTLY more efficient and flexible. What I would like to ask
> > is are there any
> > tools anywhere to convert a schema to BNF/EBNF ?
> >
> > thanks
> > andrew
> >
> > Andrew Jeavons
> >
> >
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
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> >
> >

Andrew Jeavons

www.andrewjeavons.com

+1 513 871 8278 

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    • From: Andrew Jeavons <apj@a...>
  • RE: Schema, BNF and parsing
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>

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