Re: multiple types (Re: attribute order)

["Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>]

Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote -

> > Maybe you could view an element as being instances of two types
> > at the same time: the type defined by the attribute set and
> > the type defined by the non-attribute content.  What a wierd
> > thought!
>
> I've come to believe that documents are always of an infinite
> number of types! So yes, I think you can easily say
>
>   foo.xml *conforms* to type specification A based on it's
>   attributes.
>
>   foo.xml *conforms* to type specification B based on it's
>   content structures.
>
>   foo.xml *conforms* to type specification C based on the
>   combination of it's elements and attributes.
>
 A reverse way to put it is this:  for any instance (document), there are an
infinite number of schemas for which it is valid.  For a practical example,
get XMLSpy to reverse engineer a schema for some xml instance.  It does the
best it can, but it's not usually a terribly general, well-architected
schema (it's often a good starting pooint, though).

Tom P