[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Elements cannot be described more than once in DTD, right ?
Pavel Velikhov wrote: > > Well, theoretically they are pretty serious problems. If you want to > take a union of DTDs, say when integrating two XML databases, you might end up with a DTD that > allows a lot of junk elements, while the original DTDs were strict enought. In the > database setting, when the DTDs are used as database schemas, this leads to all sorts of > problems. Maybe. I don't take DTDs that seriously and that doesn't mean I don't use them. Take the example of combining two databases. Look at the relational representation. To update or append, you must first map names then identities. When you map names in XML, the namespace works. Why? Because an instance aggregates fine as long as the local content model is valid. The namespace identifier does its job of uniquefying the string values of the element and attribute members. So far so good. We tend to regard DTDs as static defintions, monoliths. In effect, if we use aggregation in instances and still want to use DTDs, we have to consider DTDs as dynamic structures which modify their productions to cohere with the aggregate instance. This reciprocity of instance and defintion will indeed make the DTD slacker or tighter with regard to any instance of itself but not of the validatible instance. In essence, the evolution of the instance and the DTD are tightly coupled. That is useful. The problem is not creating the database, it is keeping the schema up to date with the forms of the instance which evolves in response to process. If processes are scheduled and the behaviors are well-formed, then the DTD changes according to regular productions which are known. What is useful then is to define those productions and by them, order the evolution of the DTD in accordance to the requirements of the enterprise. len xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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