[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

RE: The Knights of Tag Soup

• To: 'Uche Ogbuji' <uche.ogbuji@f...>, Rick Jelliffe <ricko@a...>
• Subject: RE: The Knights of Tag Soup
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 10:05:33 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

Precisely.  Schema/DTD evolution is hard across 
the scale of the number of implementors who can 
make changes to the code that implements it.  
Maintaining the schema itself is easy.  So, 
again, the issues of evolution will be more 
intense in the system libraries.  We spend 
a lot more time sorting out dll hell than 
bad schema design.

What we can live without are the pronouncements 
from the Beltway saying things like, avoid the 
use of attributes.  That sort of policy driven 
schema design predicated on superstition is 
harmful.  Now the schema design can hurt the 
software design because the social hierarchy 
actively supports bad decisions about fundamentals 
of markup.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: Uche Ogbuji [mailto:uche.ogbuji@f...]

Rick says:

> There are many ways that a schema may evolve, and different mechanisms
> may be suitable for each way.  For example, change over time,
> change between locales, change between processes in pipelines,
> change depending on what the user is interested in, minor changes/major
> changes.

<AOL>Very well said</AOL>

I'm surprised to come across the idea of schema evolution as a monolithic 
problem.  I am doubly surprised to see RSS held up as an example of the 
difficulty of schema evolution.  RSS is but example of politics and 
carelessness.  All social science, and not a drop of computer science to spare.

• Prev by Date: RE: XDocs and XForms?
• Next by Date: Re: Namespaces
• Previous by thread: Namespaces
• Next by thread: RE: Namespaces
• Index(es):
  • Date
  • Thread