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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Object Role Modelling (ORM) or UML or ?? for designing Schemas
 Ken North wrote: > > "... My guess is that the syntax-centric > > stranglehold will not be broken until there's a conscious focus > > on conceptual modeling, accompanied by an unspoken agreement > > that XML schemas and other markup syntaxes can readily be > > generated from conceptual model notations..." > > > > but the comment appeared to have fallen on deaf ears. > > My sense is quite a few developers are on the same wavelength. [snip] > There is clearly an advantage to using the same model to generate XML and > database schemas. However, people sometimes have to work in a manual > syntax-editing mode before they appreciate the productivity of tools. And then there are the few of us who are committed to markup precisely because syntax is its inescapable, irreducible nature. I believe that we should now be designing processes which are inherently well-suited to operate in an internetwork topology. An internetwork is radically different from the homogenous 'enterprise' network topology which is fundamental to the SQL world. The two salient characteristics of the homogenous network are that it is closed and that the functionality of each of its nodes is transparent to the others. A network is closed because in order to participate a node must conform in its processes to the shared, a priori data schemas which unify that network or, if a node is outside that network by virtue of adhering to the data schematics of a different organization, its every transaction must be transformed at a gateway to bear the semantics expected within the network with which it communicates. The advantage of this conformity is that every node of the network has a comprehensive understanding of the functionality of the other nodes, based on the semantics implicit in their enforced uniformity of data schema. An internetwork on the other hand is constructed not by conforming the data understandings of its constituent networks to some single agreed standard, but by simply overlaying a common addressing scheme across the participating networks. Within those networks, and even at individual nodes, the understanding of data--as expressed first by the structure in which it is cast and second by the manner in which it is processed--is entirely local and autonomous. The internetwork provides the advantage that nodes once out of reach because they were outside the homogenous network may now be contacted, and thereby act as counterparties to transactions, by virtue of the common addressing scheme. They cannot, however, be expected to share the fundamental, but local, understanding of data on which the form and nature of transactions on the homogenous network is predicated. Communication between such autonomous networks and nodes should be inherently well-suited to the nature of the internetwork topology which makes that communication possible. It should not, therefore, depend upon the purely local semantics which are expressed by a particular schematic or understanding of data, nor upon a particular form of processing which follows from that same understanding of such data. As syntax, markup offers that basis of communication when, and if, it is clearly understood that the semantics elaborated from that syntax will be entirely local, and different, at each autonomous node which might perform some useful process against that data. Respectfully, Walter Perry 
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