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At 12:21 AM -0500 1/14/04, Michael Champion wrote:
>The best statement I know of this point of view is Uche Ogbuji's
>"Serenity Through Markup" piece
>http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=6758 " As documents move
>between systems, trust the remote system's ability to interpret the
>document to meet its own local needs. This is known as the principle
>of loose coupling, and is reminiscent of the idea of late binding in
>programming theory. In the technology sphere, the idea is that an
>XML document used in a transaction between multiple systems need not
>always build in all possible aspects of the combined systems. Source
>systems design documents to meet their needs, while the target
>system interprets them to its own needs. ... [This can be done with]
>pipelines of data, where a document starts out in one form and ends
>up in one suited for a different environment." Sean McGrath has
>written a lot about the pipeline approach too, but all I can find
>are PPT presentations.
This is also the point of view taken by Walter Perry. However, what
you're missing here is the assumption (certainly in Walter's case,
and I think in Uche's and Sean's as well) that the documents are
well-formed. They are willing to process invalid documents. However,
well-formedness is their minimum requirement. Although the Atom folks
frequently confuse their language, what they seem to be asking for is
the option to pass around malformed documents. I have no objection if
they want to pass around invalid documents that do not actually
satisfy the Atom specification. Indeed I can conceive several very
good reasons for doing exactly that. However, passing around
malformed documents is much nastier, and should be prohibited.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
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