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> What you say is both true and wise. However, it seems to me
> that the specific
> context in which Bill Lindsey asked the question--identifying
> the type of a
> document to a native XML database--requires a single specific
> answer. The
> database may, of course, associate many schemas or document
> type definitions (in
> a larger sense than DTDs themselves) with a single identified
> document type, but
> as a practical matter there must be that single anchor for
> those various
> document definitions, or aliases, or as a single target to
> which to point
> different processing strategies. The 'markup' answer to the
> original question is
> that the type of a document is the GI of its root element.
That's one possible answer and it will often be the right answer. However, I
can certainly see situations in which users regard two documents as being of
different types even though they are both XHTML.
Since we're talking of native XML databases, in Tamino there is a
relationship between the concepts of document type and schema, but it
doesn't have to be one-to-one; a document type is whatever the user wants it
to be, the only restriction being that each document has exactly one type.
Mike Kay
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