Re: [xml-dev] The triples datamodel -- was Re: [xml-dev] SemanticWeb permathread, iteration n+1

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

At 3:11 PM -0400 6/6/04, John Cowan wrote:

>Walter Perry, are you listening?  Your Fichte has been found!

I have no idea who Fichte is/was, or what his/her relevance is here, 
but I freely admit I learned a lot of this from Walter.  Like a lot 
of developers, I didn't believe it at first since it was so contrary 
to everything I had been taught, and Walter was challenging 
assumptions I hadn't even realized I was making. But eventually it 
became clear that Walter was basically correct, once I actually 
started trying tom justify those assumptions, and once I started 
writing code to Walter's principles and saw that they worked.

I don't agree with Walter 100%. I do find schemas to be occasionally 
useful tools for documentation and diagnosis. However, I do think 
that schemas should not be seen as strait jackets, outside the 
boundaries of which there be dragons. waiting to eat the unwary. I've 
just had too much success working with schemaless and even 
consciouslly invalid documents.
-- 

   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