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Yes - all great points (thank you to everyone!). I also think that one
disadvantage to approaches #2 and #3 (from the original e-mail - these
approaches used attributes) is that using purely W3C Schema, it is not
possible to enforce mandatory/optional if, given the value of the
attributes, the entire "set" (element/attributes/values) may be
considered mandatory in some cases, but optional in others (according to
the data requirements.
To illustrate, I will remind us of approach #3:
<FinalEstimatedAmount yearType="CurrentYear" amountType="Budget">
>999.99</FinalEstimatedAmount>
If instead of this approach, one used purely elements (as with approach
#1) and the difference between 2 element names were according to the
"yearType" attribute, one would have the following 2 uniquely named
elements (using pipes to seperate sub-components):
(1) CurrentYear|Budget|Final|EstimatedAmount
(2) PriorYear|Budget|Final|EstimatedAmount
If in a given content model, element (1) above were mandatory and (2)
were optional, that is of course easy to enforce.
However, with approach #3, there would be no way to enforce this using
*purely W3C Schema* (we know RELAX NG and Schematron can) - we cannot
enforce that "FinalEstimatedAmount" is mandatory when
yearType="CurrentYear", etc. One would need to make the
"FinalEstimatedAmount" optional as a "lowest common denominator"
approach, which doesn't meet the requirement.
Thanks,
Joe
Jonathan Robie wrote:
>
> At 06:12 PM 4/3/2003 +1000, Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> >You can have your cake and eat it too, Marie Antoinette not
> >withstanding.
> >
> >For example,
> ><!ATTLIST cybfea
> > fullname CDATA #FIXED "CurrentYearBudgetFinalEstimatedAmount"
> > type CDATA #FIXED "Amount"
> > yearType CDATA #FIXED "CurrentYear"
> > amountType CDATA #FIXED "Budget"
> > finalIndicator CDATA #FIXED "Final"
> > estimateIndicator CDATA #FIXED "Estimated"
> > >
> >
> >means that the markup of
> >
> ><cybfea>999.99</cybfea>
> >
> >implies the infoset of
> >
> ><cybfea fullname="CurrentYearBudgetFinalEstimatedAmount"
> > type="Amount"
> > yearType="CurrentYear"
> > amountType="Budget"
> > finalIndicator="Final"
> > estimateIndicator="Estimated"
> > >999.99</cybfea>
>
> Of course, there is a cost to this approach as well - in some environments,
> users like to look at their markup and write queries or programs based on
> what they see in the instance. With Rick's approach, most of the action is
> precisely in the things you can't see when looking at the instance
> document. On the other hand, it conveys the information you need very
> compactly if the size of the markup matters in your environment.
>
> Again, it's best to figure out how the data will be used so you know which
> factors are important to optimize. Design is a kind of optimization, and
> you can't design until you know what you are trying to optimize.
>
> Jonathan
>
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