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

Re: archiving with xml

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: archiving with xml
• From: Ronald Bourret <rpbourret@r...>
• Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 23:17:50 -0700
• In-reply-to: <4250814E.1090107@z...>
• References: <4250814E.1090107@z...>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

I suspect you're better off with PDF's.

I've run into a company who does this sort of thing and they were very 
much of the opinion that data without rendering was at best legally 
shaky and that digitally signed, rendered documents were best. 
Unfortunately, I can't remember either the name of the company or how 
they managed to use XML in this process. (The latter is tricky because 
even if you sign the data (XML) and the transformation (XSLT, XSL-FO, 
etc.), you still can't guarantee that an engine chosen at random will 
produce the result the signer saw.)

-- Ron

Rick Marshall wrote:

> i've been thinking of archiving with xml, but i'm going to stick with 
> pdf's for documents at the moment.
> 
> the discussion on xlinks, and rendering etc has left me with this problem:
> 
> if we archive with xml, what is the legal status of the "document"? eg 
> say i archive a document as xml, (an invoice for example) and later 
> change the rendering algorithm. now when i print another copy and go to 
> court to collect some money the debtor turns up with an earlier rendered 
> version and they aren't the same "look".  i know and a court would know 
> the substance is the same, but would i have a problem with my record 
> keeping because the format that people read can change? it's an 
> integrity issue. and how do auditors cope? or are they solving the 
> problem by developing audit standards in the xml accounting stuff that 
> would make the rendering format inconsequential provided all the content 
> was rendered (and how would they know that - if say i left out a 
> discount in a later rendering, but it was in the oriiginal?)?
> 
> i understand this is a country by country issue, but is it being 
> considered anywhere?
> 
> rick <http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php>

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: archiving with xml
    • From: Dave Pawson <davep@d...>

• References:
  • archiving with xml
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>

• Prev by Date: Re: archiving with xml
• Next by Date: [xsl] Value of <id> element not returned
• Previous by thread: Re: archiving with xml
• Next by thread: Re: archiving with xml
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread