xml-dev - Re: Groves? Please ::choke::..

[Lars Marius Garshol <larsga@ifi.uio.no>]

* Guy Murphy
| 
| Now up until the last bit this sounds like DOM. Are groves just an
| object model?

In a sense, yes. However, the DOM is an API, while groves are just an
abstract data model. (It's easy to create an API for it, but the
standard doesn't do that.)

Groves consist of two things: nodes and their properties. Properties
can be named lists of nodes, lists of nodes, single nodes or simple
data (text, numbers etc). 

Also, groves have what are called property sets which you can think of
as a set of class definitions (or struct/record definitions) in a
programming language. 

There is a default property set for SGML and that more or less
corresponds to the DOM. However, you can also define property sets
for, say, MPEG files and RTF files. And since HyTime is based on
groves, this means that you can address into those kinds of data as
well once you've defined their property sets.

So, in a very real sense, groves are all about liberating the data
from the syntax in which they are enslav^H^H^H^H^H^Hserialized and 
expressing their internal structure conceptually.

--Lars M.


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