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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: The Two Poles of the XML World
 > -----Original Message----- > From: Champion, Mike [mailto:Mike.Champion@S...] > Sent: 30 December 2001 18:14 > To: xml-dev@l... > Subject: The Two Poles of the XML World (was RE: > W3C's five new XQuery/Xpath2 working drafts - Still missing Updates) [...nice summary cropped...] > So, what might the decision tree to steer someone to the "strong" pole or > the "loose" pole look like? I'll just throw out a few criteria that would > tend to point in one direction or the other, and maybe others can add to or > critique them: Perhaps these are 'smells' rather than decisions? Some of them appear to be side-effects of external pressures, rather than actual decisions. (I expect you were using the term 'decision tree' loosely anyway). I'll throw out a new one to begin with: Are you early in your development/standardisation cycle -> loose Do you have extensive experience within the domain -> strong > Are your requirements and environments predictable and stable? -> strong > Is everything changing faster than you can cope? -> loose Another way to phrase this might be: Are you confident that your have captured all your requirements? -> strong Is change expected? -> loose > Are you importing/exporting strongly typed data? -> strong > Are you importing/exporting loosely structured data? -> loose I wonder if we can decompose that further? For example I can imagine scenarios in which systems might be loosely coupled, but that individual data elements are still strongly typed. E.g. where we've got a mixture of namespaced data, some of which may be ignored. Are you working with closed schemas? (XSD?) -> strong Are you working with open/extensible schemas? (Schematron?) -> loose Schematron schemas are open by default, XSD the reverse. Can we distinguish between applications that depend on data-typing (strong), rather than on structure (loose)? > Are you developing with Java or C++/C#? -> strong > Are you developing with script or VB? -> loose While I agree that scripting is equated with looser environments, I'd disagree that use of Java/C++/C# necessitates a strong environment. They do facilitate use of data-bindings, but don't require them. Perhaps the more general decision is whether one is using data-bindings to map to language types? How about also: Are you using non-XML aware tools (grep, regexps, etc) -> loose > Do you have authority to make others do the right thing? -> strong > Are you at the mercy of folks who live by Murphy's Law? -> loose Somewhat related: Are you processing data from multiple sources -> loose Are you exchanging data with business partners -> strong Another way to state this might be: Are you aware of everyone who is processing your data -> strong Are you distributing data to multiple endpoints, some of which are unknown -> loose Cheers, L. 
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