Re: [xml-dev] DTDs, W3C Schemas, RELAX NG, Schematron?

["W. E. Perry" <wperry@fiduciary.com>]

IMH (and oft-stated) opinion, we lose the very promise of XML. The number of
correspondents and counterparties with whom we might exchange documents and
perhaps execute transactions is vastly greater if the only required
preconditions are lexical--i.e., the syntax of well formed XML. Granted,
because we lack prior agreements in 'value space' on which to understand
those interchanges and predicate those transactions, it will be necessary
(and often long and painful) for us to build up with lexical tools the
minimal one-to-one understandings we need to give each of those interactions
its necessary meaning. The point is that it can be done, however distasteful
the process for doing it anew with each new correspondent might seem to
those who would rather short-circuit the effort by limiting their
interactions to those who will accept a priori their definitions of 'value
space'.

I have spent more than twenty years working with applications built on RDBMs
and relational wannabes. They are great and useful tools, but only in an
homogenous enterprise network where the processing nodes have intimate
(white box) knowledge of each others' processing and base their
interoperability on working against identical data structures. Those are
precisely not the conditions of the internetwork topology. If we want to
extend the possibility of interoperability to every potential internetwork
participant, we cannot begin by first constraining to universe of those to
whom we will talk to only those who are willing to accept a priori our own
peculiar and limited renditions of value space.

Respectfully,

Walter Perry


"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" wrote:

> What options do we lose if we strengthen the coupling to a primitive type
> set?  I don't think I could work with relational systems without value
> types, and we do seem to share them among that application type sensibly;
> but is that the only application type one would have to share them with?