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RE: DTDs, W3C Schemas, RELAX NG, Schematron?


RE:  DTDs
As Betty said, "it depends on the tools" is one 
rule of thumb.  DTDs refuse to go away because 
they are ultimately the bottom line of the 
XML specification for basic validation.  In 
other words, you can usually count on them being 
supported in your toolset.  But given a toolset 
that supports RELAX NG, I wouldn't start there 
these days.  Given a toolset that supports XML 
Schema and a need to model, say a relational 
database, I would start with XML Schema because 
I can get a first cut using an ODBC-sourced 
dump of the relational schema.  I haven't tried 
that with RELAX so I don't know how well that 
works but I suspect it does.

But now I have this table-sourced XML and 
I have to model relational value constraints. 
At that point, I have to go to Schematron 
say in the app-info elements, or I have to 
move on to business logic in say C# or 
Java objects.

In any of these cases, as soon as one needs 
stronger datatyping, say types for integers, 
one has to get beyond DTDs.  Think of DTDs as 
XML's bottom line bootstrapping language for 
moving beyond well-formedness, and that is 
a good metric, but it won't go very far 
and one will likely have to if one needs 
a sharable definition that side of 
sharing the code.  But remember, XML 
only requires well-formedness to be 
XML and sharing code is not out of the 
question.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: tariq abdur-rahim [mailto:ecliptoid330@y...]

Interesting point!  However, would the argument now,
not be that, given the realative "weakness" of DTDs in
comparison to Schemas, RELAX NG, and Schematron, what
would the purpose be of even going the DTD route for
validation?  Too, given the example stated... 

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