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

[Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@ebt.com>]

> In my view, information architectures based on XML
> will be driven by XML schemas (hence the bean example in my last post). A
> given schema tells you how to process a given class of instances, so you
> have to have a single schema for a given instance. This seems emminently
> logical to me, but I'd be curious to hear some justification for the
> opposite view.

I think this is a very domain-specific view. 

At the end of the day, a schema has *no* natural ability to enforce 
processing on an application. An application can *use* schemas to 
help decide how to process an instance, but it is the *application*
that interprets the instance, not the schema. In your domain, 
(Bean serialization) you may state that the schema defines 
interpretation, but that view is limited to the specific application.

A schema is simply a type *projection*, or an *assertion* that may,
or may not be used. You can, and often do project different types
onto a given instance.

A (somehwat?) clear example of this is literate programming: I can
treat the document as something to be printed, or I can interpret
it as a program. For example:

   <add><integer>1</integer><integer>2</integer></add>

How do you interpret this?