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Sorry if this is an old idea. The more I have experimented with the idea recently, the more compelling it seems. What if repetitive fragments of xml had default non-flat format? Perhaps a "standard" non-flat syntax would be always recognized and flattened in a manner understood by all processors. Essentially a block of flat records would be entered as <e/> leaf nodes of nested <g/> outer elements. All attributes on the <g/> elements would be repeated on the <e/> elements. For example here is a fragment of flat records. <record grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" grpsum="2065.00" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC" account="Cash" sign="debit">500</record> <record grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" grpsum="2065.00" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC" account="Marketable securities" sign="debit">250</record> <record grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" grpsum="2065.00" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC" account="Trade receivables" sign="debit">750</record> <record grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" grpsum="2065.00" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC" account="Other receivables" sign="debit">175</record> <record grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" grpsum="2065.00" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC" account="Inventory" sign="debit">110</record> <record grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" grpsum="2065.00" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC" account="Prepaid expenses" sign="debit">340</record> <record grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" grpsum="2065.00" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC" account="Reserve for bad debts" sign="credit">60</record> Below is a new fragment that could be understood as being those equivalent <record>'s based on a reading of this <g><e/></g> block. Note that attributes "ename" and "etext" are like reserved words and might need namespace prefixes in practice. <g ename="record" grpname="Current assets" grpsign="debit" month="JUN" year="2004" type="actual" division="ABC"> <gx sign="debit"> <e account="Cash" etext="500.00"/> <e account="Marketable securities" etext="250.00"/> <e account="Trade receivables" etext="750.00"/> <e account="Other receivables" etext="175.00"/> <e account="Inventory" etext="110.00"/> <e account="Prepaid expenses" etext="340.00"/> </gx> <gx sign="credit"> <e account="Reserve for bad debts" etext="60.00"></e> </gx> <gi grpsum="2065.00"/> </g> Note a couple of other innovations. A <gi/> tag is an internal tag inside of <g/> so that global attributes can be added after the <e/>'s. In this example that might occur because the accounts are being added to a total which must also appear on each final <record/> item. The other innovation is using a <gx/> inside <g/> to subset the global lookups. I would think that each level inward should be different like <gx2/> for the next level in so that a processor always knows how far away is the top <g/> ancestor. Note that you could arrange the attributes in any way desirable. The ename attribute could be on every <e/> instead of on <g/>. This would be necessary if all elements were not <record/> but something like <Cash/>, etc. The <e/> tags would not have to be empty, they could contain markup between <e>...</e>. What else could we do with such a format? - Add meta-data as comments or ignorable attributes. We might use the <g><e/></g> just for that reason alone. - Use it as a default format for loading to database tables or spreadsheets when the <g/> format is more tabular than original true format, i.e. the case where the above had unique names not all <record/> elements but <Cash/>, etc. - This might be useful in schema files that need to be very repetitive and redundant. Some svg may be a candidate too. - This may come in handy just for the sake of reducing xml file sizes for messaging systems etc. - This special syntax would allow haumans a better visual review to avoid errors in repetitive attributes. regards, bill p
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