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> XML is *more* than a data model, it is an information model, where:
>
> data + context = information
Yes, but
data - context = a bunch of random bits
So your assertion doesn't seem all that profound. Can data even exist
without context? I don't think it's data if there's no context to which it
can be applied. Does an XML document, as a store of data, have a special
ability to carry context? I don't see how it does.
> Adaptive application can be written (if certain XML modeling rules are
> followed), that allow Meta Object Protocols (MOP) and
> Reflection to be used
> to dynamically extend the runtime environment.
Ah-yup. But a specific application of XML technology does not by itself
constitute an proof that there is an underlying data model for the syntax
that is XML. The fact that you can construct a data model (or information
model, if you like) using XML syntax does argue for its flexibility in being
adaptable to a wide variety of programming a modeling domains. But it is,
by the same token, adaptable to wide variety of document domains, and
serialized representations of all sorts of things.
It think using XML for MOP-ish descriptions is an excellent idea myself, and
have suggested as much this list in the recent past for describing how to
represent XML data in objects and collections of objects. It doesn't mean
that XML has a fixed underlying data model, though. You can make it
represent such data models, but that's different hill of beans.
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