RE: [xml-dev] (data) medium is the message

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

Peter.Hunsberger@stjude.org (Hunsberger, Peter) writes:
>> At the same time, though, I think there's a huge difference 
>> between the expectations of relational databases - which 
>> really demand a schema upfront before you're allowed to work 
>> with data - and XML, which has no such requirements.  No 
>> rules, no violation - no harm, no foul.
>
>That is currently true, but in my other response to this thread I sort
>of point out that this may be less and less true going forward.  If
>you want to have any half way decent treatment of your XML (say even
>within your application) you may need a schema just to tell a parser
>how to optimally parse your XML.  This schema may come about after the
>fact, but by the time you get to doing data exchange it should be
>hanging around. Certainly, it seems an unreasonable expectation that
>one can have much in the way of automated (or efficient manual)
>generalized mappings without a schema (or equivalent metadata) on both
>sides of the fence.

That's assuming that your application is expected to know everything
about incoming data up-front.  There are plenty of cases where that
isn't necessarily true.  Stylesheets and similar mechanisms may provide
information outside of a schema context, and human intervention may be a
very reasonable expectation in many cases.  Automation may create as
many problems as it solves.



-- 
Simon St.Laurent
Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
Errors, errors, all fall down!
http://simonstl.com -- http://monasticxml.org