RE: RNG more popular with doc heads and XSD with data heads?

[<Ari.Nordstrom@sorman.com>]

DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO) wrote...
> I saw someone (don't remember who) make the generalization 
> recently that
> RELAX NG is gaining in popularity with people doing XML work with
> irregularly structured documents that would end up being 
> published in some
> medium or other (the "doc heads"), and that W3C Schemas are 
> more entrenched
> with the XML developers doing systems involved in more transactional
> processes such as web services and database interaction 
> ("data heads"). Does
> anyone strongly agree or disagree with this? 

I have yet to see Relax NG actually being used out there. It certainly seems to be more popular among those docheads that develop XML apps for others for a living but as for real-life customers, no-one I know of uses it (or even knows what it is).


> An important auxiliary question: how many large publishing 
> organizations
> (i.e. doc heads with lots of documents) have 1. made a strong 
> commitment to
> XSD, 2. made a strong commitment to RNG, or 3. are still 
> sticking with DTDs?

My guess is DTDs--I know I do--but then, it's also a question of how you define a publishing organization. My definition is any entity that produces documents in any regular fashion for others to read.


> Just *why* RNG would be more attractive to doc heads and XSD 
> to data heads
> seems fairly obvious to me--RNG allows greater precision in 
> how tightly or
> loosely you specify content model constraints, XSD makes mapping to
> relational and OO systems easier, transactional XML specs are usually
> written in XSD, etc.--so I'd rather not start a big long 
> thread adding to
> these "why" lists. I'm more interested in hearing about the levels of
> commitment among doc heads that people have seen to the three 
> choices listed
> above, to get an idea of where we're all headed.

I'm a dochead, and the answer's simple for me. XSD is way too complex to write, and it has some annoying shortcomings. I'd go with DTDs (and so far, my clients do, too) but if we absolutely must have something else, then Relax NG seems far more accessible.

Best,

/Ari