RE: ZDNet Schema article,and hiding complexity within user-friendlyproducts

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Absolutely.  The value for contract-constrained 
communication is the first and best application.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Francis Norton [mailto:francis@redrice.com]



"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote:
> 
> The interesting application is not validation but
> generation of support systems from the schema.  As
> has been pointed out often in the past, many
> schema uses are upstream in the authoring suite.
> Charlie Sorgi (then Mentor Context) pointed this
> out in the late eighties about SGML:  a DTD is as much a
> specification for the authoring tool as anything
> else.   Not that validation is not useful.  Like
> so many things, it should be useful on demand, a
> service, not necessarily a constraint.

True, but I'd take it further. The main purpose of a schema language for
me is specifying data structures, regardless of automated support for
validation *or* authoring.

First time I used XML schemas was DSD, just as a spec, for specifying
the messages we would recieve from another company's insurance quote
engine. No automated support at all, just three or four pages of agreed
DSD schema.

First message that came through, parsed perfectly. 

Makes a change from the years I spent doing client-server programming
where agreeing, parsing and debugging buffers would take typically take
half the project.