RE: Personal reply to Edd Dumbill's XML Hack Article wrt W3C XML Schema

["David E. Cleary" <davec@progress.com>]

> >What you are saying is that someone might want to treat "value" directly
> >as something other than a floating point number?
>
> Can't speak directly for Walter, but yep.  It's totally up to the
> recipient, IMHO.  What's interesting about 45.67?  That it's a floating
> point number?  That it includes two sequential pairs of numbers separated
> by a period, which together form a four-digit sequence?  That 45<67?
>
> Sure, it gets ridiculous.  But unless you have a pre-existing
> relationship
> with the recipient, or are the recipient yourself, why do you
> automatically
> expect them to share your reading of what's important?

Because the XML instance conforms to a schema that says the value element
contains a decimal number. If you do not want datatypes in XML, then I can
see why you do not want XML Schema. However, many people out there do want
datatypes, and they make application development much easier. If you do not
want datatypes, then stick to DTDs or a schema dialect that doesn't support
the notion. You can even generate a PSVI that has all element content
defined as anySimpleType and work perfectly fine with schema aware tools and
apis.

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David Cleary
Progress Software

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