[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: XML spec and XSD
I'm one of those people who don't fall in love with technologies for their own sake, regardless of how beautiful and/or useful they might be. I do have a fondness for elegance, as well as for practicality, but I believe that technology provides tools and nothing more. XSD is one such tool, DTD is another. Each has its uses, and I use them both. As Simon has pointed out, DTDs do a great job for document-centric applications where there is little that needs to be known about the semantics of atomic data types. I use DTDs for my editing work on the SQL standard and on W3C documents, as well as for a host of other documents I do in other aspects of my day job and my life. Schemas are often very clumsy for validating "ustructured" textual documents, such as fiction books, biographies, and the like. But schemas (XSD being the W3C-defined instance of this technology) are very useful when dealing with structured documents, especially those that contain lots of traditional data and/or those that are generated specifically from data (not to mention those that *are* data expressed in an XML tree). I get very, very frustrated when I'm trying to drive a nail into their wall using a screwdriver, as well as when I'm trying to get a screw out of the wall using a hammer. That doesn't make me hate the screwdriver or the hammer -- nor, for that matter, to love either one when I figure out that I got it backwards and start using the proper tool for each job. They're just tools. Pick the right one for your job. If your management is forcing you to use XSD for unstructured document validation (or DTDs for highly structured data validation), don't hate XSD (or DTD)...hate the bureaucracy that limits your choice of tool! Hope this helps, Jim ======================================================================== Jim Melton --- Editor of ISO/IEC 9075-* (SQL) Phone: +1.801.942.0144 Chair, W3C XML Query WG; XQX (etc.) editor Fax : +1.801.942.3345 Oracle Corporation Oracle Email: jim dot melton at oracle dot com 1930 Viscounti Drive Standards email: jim dot melton at acm dot org Sandy, UT 84093-1063 USA Personal email: jim at melton dot name ======================================================================== = Facts are facts. But any opinions expressed are the opinions = = only of myself and may or may not reflect the opinions of anybody = = else with whom I may or may not have discussed the issues at hand. = ========================================================================
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