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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: The privilege of XML parsing - Data types,binary XML and
 [Roger Costello] >I think that I see what you are saying Sean, but I'd like to analyze this a >bit. Let's take the aircraft example: ><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> ><aircraft> > <elevation>12000</elevation> ></aircraft> >There is no associated data model with this. It is just a string. It is this >form that gets transmitted from client to application? Yes but then the application puts it through an XML processor. This results in a data model (sequeence of events, a tree, series of tokens, whatever). So the question is - what is in that data model? I advocate that is should be as little as possible above the surface syntax and certainly should not magically result in elevation becoming a 32 bit integer from the point of view of my application. >I have some questions about something that you said: "Applications come and go >but data lives forever". I believe that when you say "data" you are referring >just to the string: ><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> ><aircraft> > <elevation>12000</elevation> ></aircraft> Yes. My business has a sales ledger. Most businesses do. What is a sales ledger? In data terms the details haven't changed much in centuries. Yet every few years we chuck it all out and replace it with a new system - an application. Typically when we do that existing data becomes legacy overnight. Its total madness and XML, properly applied, can help stop this madness. A key part of doing it is to make the data as independent of the foibles of any particular application as we can. After all, we are going to chunk away the application if a few years :-( I think cleanly separating the fundamental data from any particular applications interpretation of it, is an important survival tactic. Again, as I said before, I'm not against data typing but I see it as being an application level - not a parser level view of the data. I think pipelines can neatly address the issue of how and where datatyping gets added so that when an application goes up in smoke but its data is retained, we can easily get at the data as distinct from some applications view of that data. regards, Sean http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com 
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