[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
On Mon, 2004-06-07 at 23:03, jcowan@reutershealth.com wrote:
> Henrik Martensson scripsit:
>
> > Even if the new markup does not change the workings of existing parts of
> > the system, someone must still spend time checking it out. Otherwise,
> > how would one know that the new information does not affect the existing
> > system?
>
> This is where a little "mustUnderstand" system, like having an attribute
> mu:mustUnderstand with value 1, would be useful. Applications should reject
> documents with elements containing this attribute unless they understand
> what the element is about.
Yes, this sometimes helps, and I have used such techniques. The problem
is that what is vital information for one process, may be useless crud
for another, and vice versa.
To compund the problem, when the data format is designed, it is likely
that no one has even thought of all the ways the data will be processed.
(I occasionally work with pre-web data that must be transformed to HTML,
for example.)
/Henrik
|
