[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Architectural Forms and XAF
[Steve Newcomb] > >Sean, somehow you've completely missed the point of AFs. Always a possibility but I don't think so! > AFs are not >about general transformations. If you try to use AFs for general >transformations, you're exactly right: you'll quickly discover that >they don't do much for you. They don't do nearly enough! They *are* about transformation. That is how they purport to facilitate interchange. N connunicating entities agree to use an architectural DTD. Parsing with respect to the architectural DTD *is* a transformation from each of the N source DTDs to the architectural DTD. (Note that I am not using your term "meta-DTD" as I don't believe it is appropriate for what AFs do). > >Now here's the real point. Without AFs, there are only two choices, >in all cases where all the players in an industry must communicate >freely with each other: > >(1) Everybody has to use the same DTD or Schema (which ain't gonna > happen for reasons too obvious to mention here), or > >(2) Everybody uses different DTDs, and, for N DTDs, there must be > roughly N-squared transformation specifications to convert between > them. There are three choices - not two:- (3) Agree an interchange DTD. For N DTDs, there are N transformations to the interchange DTD. This is *exactly* what AFs do where "interchange DTD" == "architectural DTD". However, by choosing to use AFs for this, you (IMHO severly) limit the degree of mapping between the source DTD and the interchange DTD. I am a big fan of interchange DTDs. My experience,FWIW, is that the differences between DTDs that need to be mapped to an interchange DTD are almost always such that the transformation to the interchange DTD cannot be expressed with AFs. [...] > >AFs provide a paradigm in which, *precisely because AF transformations >are so bloody limited in their transformational power*, everybody gets >to control their own DTDs, and, at the same time, everybody's messages >are interpretable and validatable as industry-standard messages. I don't follow this. You seem to be saying that the limimitations on AF transformation power somehow helps. Please explain. regards, Sean, *************************************************************************** This is xml-dev, the mailing list for XML developers. To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo@x...&BODY=unsubscribe%20xml-dev List archives are available at http://xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ ***************************************************************************
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