[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: 3 approaches to structure lists, plus an analysis of each
At 2009-02-15 07:58 -0500, Costello, Roger L. wrote: >Thanks Ken, this is excellent. It will take me a while to absorb all >this, but from a brief examination of your material I conclude that >you recommend approach #3 - express a list as an XML instance >document, using domain-specific terminology (i.e. do not express >lists using a schema language). Is that what you recommend? Forgive me for not having gone into more detail in direct response to your post, but it was dinner time on Valentine's Day that you sent out your initial question. I could only make the time to do a quick overview of our CLRTC work. But, no, I was not endorsing your #3, I was proposing a #4, and I had meant to introduce my post saying "But there is another way..." and I go too mired in the details. Tony Coates's revelation in his work with business documents was not to use a schema (your #1 or #2), or a domain-specific XML vocabulary (your #3), but rather an internationally standardized cross-domain XML vocabulary he dubbed "genericode". The OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) project adopted genericode and it was deployed using Schematron and XSLT in a way that was observed to be independent of UBL. I founded the OASIS Code List Representation Technical Committee (CLRTC) to manage the standardization of Tony's work as OASIS Genericode 1.0, and we are working on standardizing Context/value Association files, which can be used for more than your three scenarios of application pick lists, managed information and validation. Controlled vocabularies need to be managed as their own entities. Genericode, as with most XML vocabularies, is targeted as an interchange vocabulary. Custodians of controlled vocabularies can use whatever technology they want to maintain or implement their responsibility, genericode can be used to publish a snapshot of the work as assign list-level meta data to identify that snapshot. At least two tools are available today to read and write genericode files: Unimaze ebMapper - http://www.unimaze.com/ebmapper.aspx Crane's gc2ods - http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/sales/Crane-gc2ods ... and I have some free stylesheets for rendering genericode files in HTML for the review by people who are afraid of angle brackets (as I find in ecommerce circles): http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ubl/index.htm#codess ... and by having a standardized format then users can choose to represent any controlled vocabulary with any associated value-level meta data, and not have to write custom tools. The CLRTC is hoping many vendors will adopt genericode and CVA support in their products. In international commerce, many code lists are maintained by international registrars and are published for worldwide use (country lists, currency lists, payment means, etc.) I use payment means in a lot of my examples because it makes sense that someone, somewhere, would have come up with an international standardized controlled vocabulary for representing how to spend money: http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0-update/cl/gc/default/PaymentMeansCode-.0.gc In UBL all of the information items are globally defined per the naming and design rules. Trading partners may need to use different code lists for the same element found in different document contexts. The use of context/value association files allows UBL to specify which code lists are used where in the document, a customization community to layer on top of that their constraints for code lists, and then for trading partners to layer on top of that specific constraints for code lists between two parties. All without touching the UBL schemas, which is important when claiming conformance. And in the course of business, code list constraints between trading partners change all the time, and this approach means you don't have to change the schemas. BTW, in the same way that CALS tables were a generic markup vocabulary for the expression of dense tabular structures, genericode can be used as a generic markup vocabulary for keyed sparse tabular structures. An application of this is the association of document model information in UBL keyed on unique ISO/IEC 11179 Dictionary Entry Names maintained in spreadsheets. I published all the UBL International Data Dictionary (IDD) spreadsheets as genericode files so that programmers can work with the IDD without having to read the spreadsheets: http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/resources/ubl/index.htm#ubl2idd2genericode ... in turn these were used in the creation of a multi-lingual user interface in an OpenOffice 3 tool that specifies customization subsets of UBL: http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/sales/Crane-UBLProfile/#doctype Anyone in Europe interested in this can attend my delivery in March 2009 in Brussels of our one-day hands-on "Practical Code List Implementation (Using Controlled Vocabularies in XML Documents)": http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/schedule.htm#pcli http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/pcli/pclisyl.htm I'm delivering a lecture on this at XML Prague 2009 http://www.XMLPrague.cz It is also possible I'll be delivering the class in Hong Kong in April. I also sell a book of the training material (published last week): http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/#pcli-dl I hope this helps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ken -- Upcoming hands-on XSLT, UBL & code list hands-on training classes: Brussels, BE 2009-03; Prague, CZ 2009-03, http://www.xmlprague.cz Training tools: Comprehensive interactive XSLT/XPath 1.0/2.0 video Video lesson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrNjJCh7Ppg&fmt=18 Video overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTiodiij6gE&fmt=18 G. Ken Holman mailto:gkholman@C... Crane Softwrights Ltd. http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/x/ Male Cancer Awareness Nov'07 http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/x/bc Legal business disclaimers: http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/legal
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