[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
At 6:41 AM -0700 6/6/04, Robert Koberg wrote:
>Baloney. You can simply modify the schema. That way all members of
>the team use the same convention, from authors to template creators
>to developers.
Again another unexamined assumption that's critical to the issue at
hand. You and I (and a thousand other developers) are *not* on the
same team. Yet we need to communicate anyway. Rigid fixed schemas may
well work for a group of ten developers, especially if they're all on
the same team in the same organization, doing essentially the same
thing with the data.
But rigid fixed schemas fail when we're talking about thousands or
tens of thousands or even millions of disconnected developers who do
not have prior agreements, who do not know each other, and who are
doing very different things with the same data. This is the world of
the Internet. This is the world I work in. This is the world more and
more developers are working in more and more of the time, and the old
practices that worked in small, closed systems behind the firewall
are failing. It's time to learn how to design systems that are
flexible and loosely coupled enough to work in this new environment.
XML is a critical component in making this work. Maybe RDF is too,
though I'm still not convinced (to bring this thread back on topic.)
Schemas really aren't. At best schemas are a useful diagnostic tool
for deciding what kind of document you've got so you can dispatch it
to the appropriate local process. At worst, however, schemas
encourage a mindset and assumptions that are actively harmful when
trying to produce scalable, robust, interoperable systems.
--
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
|
