xml-dev - Re: Extra Complexity?

["Samuel R. Blackburn" <sblackbu@erols.com>]

It depends on how you use XML. If you use it to transfer
data between applications then DTD's are completely useless.
Their assumption that the world is flat is inappropriate for
data applications. Also, the validations performed using DTD's
don't buy you anything. The application must perform its own
validation based upon some business rules. DTD's allow you
to "validate" that a field contains a number but you can't use
DTD's to "validate" that a field contains a prime number (that
is an application layer validation).

If you want to replace HTML (i.e. pretty text) then DTD's become
useful.

HTH,

Sam
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sam_blackburn

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Holle <dan@holle.demon.co.uk>
To: xml-dev@ic.ac.uk <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
Date: Saturday, February 06, 1999 5:07 PM
Subject: DTD: Extra Complexity?


>Many applications I've seen, and a few that I have created, don't validate
>the XML against a DTD.
>
>Is the DTD an extra step, inherited from SGML, that doesn't really fit XML?
>
>--dan


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