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Ronald Bourret wrote:
> I think where the XML Schemas data types have missed the boat is in
> their degree of complexity, as Amy Lewis points out. If you want
> interoperability, you can't go much beyond saying that a number is an
> integer. It is the up to the recipient of the document to decide (a)
> whether they can represent that number in whatever language / system
> they are using and (b) what data type they choose to represent it in.
>
> (Note that range restrictions -- e.g. I only sell quantities between 1
> and 10 -- are separate from type. This is most evident when you think
> about how little data has a real world range of, say, -32768 to 32767,
> and shows the artificiality of data types like short, int, and double in
> markup.)
While I don't like XSchema particularly well, this argument
is a bit flawed. XSchema is, among other things, supposed
to play a major role in XML-DBs and mappings of XML to/from
other DBs. To the DB people, differences between short, int
and wider types sometimes matter, not because of storage but
because of I/O and disk R/W capacity. There are life databases
where this makes a significant difference in performance.
Whether it was really a good idea to force this on unsuspecting
users who wouldn't even think of touching a DB is another
matter.
J.Pietschmann
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