xml-dev - Re: DTD Question

["Anders W. Tell" <anderst@toolsmiths.se>]

"Samuel R. Blackburn" wrote:

> I just attended a briefing about XML. One of the things
> that struck me was, if I understand the presenter, DTD
> thinks the world is flat. Is it possible for DTD to describe
> elements of the same name but have different meaning?
>
> Consider the following:
>
> <NAME>
>   <FIRST>Sam</FIRST>
>   <LAST>Blackburn</LAST>
> </NAME>
> <ROUTE>
>    <FIRST>99.409</FIRST>
>    <LAST>2091.7785</LAST>
> </ROUTE>
>
> Is it possible in DTD to say that NAME.FIRST is a string
> and ROUTE.FIRST is a number?
>
> TIA,

There are at least two ways of solving this type of problems
which arise when trying to "encode" C/C++/Corba/RPC
data structures in XML.

Example:

struct NAME {
    char     FIRST[10];
    char     LAST[10];
}
struct ROUTE {
    char     FIRST[10];
    char     LAST[10];
}

** 1 **
<NAME>
   <NAME_FIRST>Sam</NAME_FIRST>
   <NAME_LAST>Blackburn</NAME_LAST>
</NAME>
<ROUTE>
    <ROUTE_FIRST>99.409</ROUTE_FIRST>
    <ROUTE_LAST>2091.7785</ROUTE_LAST>
</ROUTE>

Now the NAME's and LAST's have different definitions and may
be handle differently the applications.Still the DTD does don recognise
the datatype difference.

** 2 **
<NAME>
   <string name="NAME">Sam</string>
   <string name="LAST">Blackburn</string>
</NAME>
<ROUTE>
    <number name="FIRST" value="99.409" />
    <number name="LAST" value="2091.7785" />
</ROUTE>

Here you have both names and datatypes available in a simple manor,
with no name clashing and and DTD that handles datatypes.
This is what I personally use for primitive datatype which cannot be
divided.

Best
/Anders
--
/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
/  Financial Toolsmiths AB  /
/  Anders W. Tell           /
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