• From: richard@i... (Richard Tobin)
• To: xml-dev@l...
• Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:15:33 +0100 (BST)

In article <B546C312A37C12438A22154026CDC7E01580FF61@e...> you write:
>How can one automate the process of generation of instances?

Choose a random legal top-level element.  Give it any required
attributes, with values chosen from the legal possibilities.
Randomly choose optional attributes to give it.  Then give it child
elements in accordance with its content model, making random choices
where the content model allows them.  Add random text-content if
allowed, or random whitespace for element-only content.  Continue
recursively.

In practice you would probably want to specify limits on the nesting
depth and so on.

Satisfying ID/IDREF and similar constraints can be hard in theory
(Henry Thompson and I produced a DTD where generating instances is
equivalent to 3SAT), but this is probably not important in realistic
cases.

-- Richard
-- 
"Consideration shall be given to the need for as many as 32 characters
in some alphabets" - X3.4, 1963.

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Any tool to generate xml documents?
    • From: ycao5@s...

• References:
  • RE: Any tool to generate xml documents?
    • From: "Shlomo Yona" <S.Yona@F...>