[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: RE: XQuery and DTD/Schema?
At 03:00 PM 7/3/2002 -0400, Jonathan Robie wrote: >Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me. > >Did you have a technical point to make? Yes, Jonathan. The very same point that you never care to listen to, but I can repeat it for you yet again if perhaps it will humor you. XML is a wonderful set of tools for marking-up information with labeled structures. DTDs and RELAX NG pretty much acknowledge that foundation, and build on it cleanly. RELAX NG's use of structural patterns seems like a perfect fit for the capabilities inherent in XML and markup generally. W3C XML Schema throws away these understandings of labeled structures, and instead proceeds to create a mash of type systems which impose themselves on the structures of XML rather than meshing cleanly with them. Effectively, W3C XML Schema bolts a variety of understandings from the OOP and relational database worlds, and bolts them onto XML haphazardly, with no respect for notions like "element type definition" that came with XML 1.0. RELAX NG makes me think of a set of houses built to fit in their environment, with minimum impact on the surrounding terrain. W3C XML Schema makes me think of a subdivision built by clearcutting the area and then building houses according to plans that worked well enough someplace else. Perhaps that's merely an aesthetic point, something W3C XML Schema is notoriously bad at anyway. Technically, however, I think the impedance mismatch between W3C XML Schema and XML itself is severe, as W3C XML Schema's notion of type has only passing connections to XML 1.0's notion of type. The W3C seems more inclined to force these notions into XML and related technologies than to ask whether this is appropriate in the first place. Simon St.Laurent "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." - Emile Coue
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