RE: DTD's

[Wayne Steele <xmlmaster@hotmail.com>]

I strongly second this.

Just because you have a DTD, doesn't mean you have to use the DTD in any of 
your software.

When people ask you about the grammer for your XML, instead of sending them 
your software design documents, or waving your hands and making a specch, 
you can just send them the DTD.

It gives you license to yell at your developers if they produce XML that 
doesn't conform to the DTD: "Either fix the code or fix the DTD".

Even if DTDs cannot capture the true sematics and constraints or your 
application, you can almost always construct a DTD that validates a superset 
of your intended documents, and include comments describing what you really 
mean.

For an example of this, take a look at the DTD I wrote for OPML:

http://static.userland.com/gems/radiodiscuss/opmlDtd.txt

DTDs are well-understood, and you CAN use it in software processes, if you 
want.

Sandra:
   What are the arguments AGAINST creating a DTD in your case?


-Wayne Steele


>From: Frank Richards <frichards@softquad.com>
>Reply-To: Frank Richards <frichards@softquad.com>
>To: 'XML Development' <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
>Subject: RE: DTD's
>Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 13:26:49 -0400
>
>Sandra,
>
>I can give two reasons to have a DTD anyway:
>
>First, at design & code time, it provides a formal schema which acts as a
>contract between all the users and creators of the documents -- if all
>documents created are valid, and all readers can read any valid document,
>then your system will work.
>
>Second, your quality argument: If these documents are created by people,
>then you really need to validate to prevent simple human error. Even if the
>docs are machine generated, in a medical application, being paranoid about 
>a
>change to one side not being picked up on the other sounds like a good
>ideal.
>
>Frank
>
> > Hi,
> >   We have a question about the necessity of DTD.  There are folks
> >   among our developers who postulate that so long as the document
> >   is well-formed, we don't need DTD's.  So far, so true.  However,
> >   might this pose a quality problem later on especially if you want
> >   to limit what are considered legitimate tags in the document?
> > Regards,
> > Sandra Carney
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