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Ah, yes. Because arbitrary precision decimals are wide spread and interoperable across multiple platforms and programming languages. I remember reading somewhere that W3C XML Schema just added a third layer of impedence mismatch to the mix. In the old days we had objects --> database impedence mismatches which cultivated the rise of object oriented databases. Now we have XSD ->objects-> database as the new impedence mismatch. Quite frankly, I'm beginning to be of the opinion that the primacy of xs:integer and xs:decimal types in most schemas is a mistake given that we have xs:float, xs:double and xs:int which are guaranteed to interoperate while the former are not.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Robie [mailto:jonathan.robie@datadirect-technologies.com]
Sent: Wed 12/4/2002 11:57 AM
To: Rich Salz
Cc: XML DEV
Subject: Re: [xml-dev] bohemians, gentry
At 02:43 PM 12/4/2002 -0500, Rich Salz wrote:
There *is* a datatype that I could use to represent Pi to ten thousand
digits (or one million if I bought the book):
>3.2.3 decimal
>
> [Definition:] decimal represents arbitrary precision decimal
> numbers.
If the document uses this datatype, then the Wizards had better be aware of
what the phrase "arbitrary precision" means. Using the datatype is a clear
warning to applications. Without the datatype, an application might
encounter decimals of very different sizes, but not be aware that arbitrary
precision numbers might arise until they encounter the first REALLLY BIG
number.
Of course, you can write schemas that use decimals of fixed precision too.
In either case, the schema is explicit about the kinds of data applications
should be prepared to handle.
So isn't the use of datatypes more helpful than harmful in this case?
Jonathan
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