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Re: Better design: "flatter is better" or "nesting is better"

• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>
• Subject: Re: Better design: "flatter is better" or "nesting is better" ?
• From: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>
• Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 16:53:01 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...
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• Reply-to: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>

On 10/3/05, Costello, Roger L. <costello@m...> wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> Excellent discussion!
>
> A lot of important issues have been raised.  I would like to focus on one
> issue, and then come back to the other issues.
>
> The issue is this: what are the roles of an XML document?
>
> As I have been doing with my previous messages, I will make a hypothesis and
> then invite your critique.
> Hypothesis: The Role of an XML Document is either as a Storage Medium or as
> a Transport Format
> An XML document may take one of these roles:
>
> (1) The XML document is a storage medium.  Applications operate directly on
> the XML document.
>
> (2) The XML document is a (transient) transport format.  Upon arrival at its
> destination the data is moved into a storage medium (such as a relational
> database).  Applications do not operate on the XML document.  Applications
> operate on the data in the storage medium.
>
> Questions:
>
> 1. I believe that these two roles represent the two ends of the spectrum for
> all possible uses of XML.  (Of course, mixed forms are possible)  Is there
> another role that is not captured?  (i.e., a third dimension?)
>
> 2. Peter: I think that XML documents containing presentation-specific data
> falls under the first category (XML as a storage medium).  Do you agree?
>

Not completely.  In our case much of the presentation specific
representation is created dynamically and then sent to the browser (in
particular we've been playing with XML styled with CSS.  Little of the
abstract presentation model is stored directly, although we do have
other presentation specific information that is stored in a database.

We've also got operational / transactional messages which end up
stored for audit purposes. I'd normally expect data that one
institution or application creates dynamically (say in response to a
SOAP request) might end up stored in the receivers data base.  As
such,  I'm not sure I find the distinctions you're trying to draw here
very useful this time around; I'd expect the mixed usage case to be
the norm, and pure storage or pure transport forms to hit the 20% mark
at best...

<snip/>

--
Peter Hunsberger

• References:
  • Re: Better design: "flatter is better" or "nesting isbetter" ?
    • From: Dave Pawson <davep@d...>
  • Re: Better design: "flatter is better" or "nesting is better" ?
    • From: Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>
  • RE: Better design: "flatter is better" or "nesting is better" ?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>

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