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Re: attribute order

• To: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@C...>
• Subject: Re: attribute order
• From: Uche Ogbuji <Uche.Ogbuji@f...>
• Date: Sun, 08 May 2005 05:15:41 -0600
• Cc: XML List Developers <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <6.2.1.2.2.20050507222513.02c81650@p...>
• Organization: Fourthought, Inc.
• References: <427BFE51.3010609@z...> <6.2.1.2.2.20050507222513.02c81650@p...>

On Sat, 2005-05-07 at 22:26 -0400, G. Ken Holman wrote:
> At 2005-05-07 09:31 +1000, Rick Marshall wrote:
> >i've read a lot on this list about attribute order and the related problem 
> >of "how do i decide to make something an attribute or an element?"
> >
> >surely one simple answer to both these questions is "if order matters then 
> >it is an element. if order doesn't matter then consider other things - 
> >white space significance, character encoding, etc."
> >
> >in fact a short(?) list of the differences between entities and attributes 
> >would make these decisions a lot easier.
> >
> >perhaps we could build such a list (or advertise a link to one).
> 
> http://xml.coverpages.org/elementsAndAttrs.html
> 
> I hope this helps.

Which is just one of the resources I drew upon (and linked) in my
article on the matter:

Principles of XML design: When to use elementsversus attributes
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-eleatt.html

Which, over all, I think is broader and covers more of the "list of
differences" Rick mentions.

BTW, "if you need order use elements and if not, use attributes" is far
too simplistic.  What about making the choice when there's only one data
element to model?  What about consideration of internal structure in the
data item that might trump the order issue (we don't get all our data
tediously normalized).  Again, I dig more deeply in the article.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net                    http://fourthought.com
http://copia.ogbuji.net                   http://4Suite.org
Use CSS to display XML, part 2 - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/x-dw-x-xmlcss2-i.html
XML Output with 4Suite & Amara - http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/04/20/py-xml.html
Use XSLT to prepare XML for import into OpenOffice Calc - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-oocalc/
Schema standardization for top-down semantic transparency - http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-think31.html

• References:
  • attribute order
    • From: Rick Marshall <rjm@z...>
  • Re: attribute order
    • From: "G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@C...>

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