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At 3:26 PM +0200 5/7/02, Matthew Gertner wrote:
> I can
>certainly say from my experience programming in Java and C++ that I would
>prefer for a number to be a number and for a date to be a date, rather than
>having to constantly convert back and forth.
>
You're assuming that everyone agrees with you on what a date is, and
what a number is, and so forth. If you think about it, I suspect
you'll realize that's not true. Is a number floating point or
integer? What are its maximum and minimum values? Does a date type
include dates after 10000 CE or before 1000 CE? Strings are
reasonably portable. Dates and numbers aren't in practice. The local
type I want to use may not be the type you want to send. XML lets us
talk to each other in spite of that.
The schemas data types spec tries to address these problems by being
all things to all people, but not all environments can handle
integers that can exceed a googoolplex or dates that precede Julius
Caesar. Your date type and my date type are not necessarily the same
thing. Your number type and my number type are not necessarily the
same thing.
--
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| Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@metalab.unc.edu | Writer/Programmer |
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| The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001) |
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| http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/ |
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