xml-dev - RE: canonical form

[Andrew Layman <andrewl@microsoft.com>]

By 'canonical form' I assume you mean the style of XML described in the
paper I co-authored showing how graphs of objects could be serialized in XML
using elements to represent objects/nodes and attributes for
properties/edges.  I should clarify something: This paper shows only one
possible way to serialize graphs, and serializing graphs is only one
possible use of XML.  The particular choices in that paper were motivated by
the fact that, if one wishes to describe the syntax using a DTD, elements do
not provide local scoping of property names while attributes do.

It is perfectly reasonable to choose other styles of XML usage for
serializing graphs.  The style you indicate (properties as subelements) can
be made to work, though describing the resulting syntax in a DTD is either
not possible or requires some munging of property names.  (This awkwardness
is relieved in the drafts of the new schema language under discussion at the
W3C.)

I hope this is helpful,

Andrew Layman
Microsoft



-----Original Message-----
From: yimin zhu [mailto:yiminz@timberline.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 1999 8:17 AM
To: xml-dev
Subject: canonical form


While mapping graphs, say UML models into XML-data schema, what will happen
if I do not use "canonical form"? I mean entity properties are mapped to
subelements rather than attributes? Does anyone ran into the same problem
before?

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