RE: [xml-dev] Are people really using Identity constraints specified in XML schema?

["Cox, Bruce" <Bruce.Cox@USPTO.GOV>]

I think CAM is not useful for me in that patents are not assembled from
boilerplate.  Each one is unique.  Even in a large organization that
produces many patents, only the most trivial of content is reused from
one patent to the next (company name, attorney name).  I could be
mistaken, but I did not see a really rich content validation mechanism
in CAM, but a framework within which, in my case, there would still be
lots of custom work to do.  Xpath is cool for validating across
elements, but most of what I want to do is within a single element in a
single document (even though there are six to eight thousand per week).


Bruce B. Cox
SA4XMLT
+1-703-306-2606

-----Original Message-----
From: Hunsberger, Peter [mailto:Peter.Hunsberger@STJUDE.ORG] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004 9:27 AM
To: bry@itnisk.com
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Are people really using Identity constraints
specified in XML schema?

bry@itnisk.com writes:

> To: Hunsberger, Peter
> > 
> > Many thanks for the link, when I first head of CAM the description 
> > didn't make it sound at all useful (seems to me the name only 
> > partially reflects the intended capabilities). This might be a 
> > standard that we may eventually want to support.
> 
> Well I don't know anything about patents, unless it were the glory 
> days of patent medicine, the things that made me think about CAM was 
> in the context of content assembly where the content is not in xml 
> format, which I supposed some patents from various offices might not 
> be. When you used the repository term there I immediately thought 
> about CAM's requirements for maintaining transactional integrity.

It was Bruce Cox who was asking from a patent perspective.  I don't
think he saw CAM as being useful there, though I'm still not quite sure
why.  

We're doing development of data management systems for Clinical Trials
data.  The CAM applicability here is not so much in transactional
assembly as it is in the way CAM allows for layers of customization:
we've got 100's of open trials that change on a regular basis.  They all
feed in and out of a common database but even within a single protocol
(and a trial may have many protocols involved) there may be variations
on how a particular screen is presented and validated depending on the
context.
  
> > Questions:
> > 
> > 1) Just glancing at the spec it appears to have at least
> some overlap
> > with Schematron for parts of it.  Anyone looked at a Schematron to
> > CAM(/subcomponent?) conversion or the converse?
> > 
> glad to hear you say this, I also felt there were some schematron 
> similarities in the constraints of xml documents using xpath 
> obviously, however schematron doesn't really have any 
> merging/assembling capabilities of inputs (meaning merging/assembling 
> towards valid outputs). Personally I would really like seeing some 
> sort of schematron/CAM interactivity, mainly cause it would be more 
> interesting I think than CAM/XSD interactivity.

Yes, CAM obviously tries to do more than Schematron which was why I put
the "subcomponent" qualification in there.  Given the layers of
validation that CAM targets Schematron seems like a natural fit.

> 
> > 2) Any one using this for anything production like?
> 
> According to David Webber British Telecomm is using up to 100  CAM 
>templates for "checking field trouble ticket reports on a  daily basis"

>I don't know anything about field trouble  tickets but supposedly they 
>are troublesome, as well as being  about trouble. As I understand they 
>are using JCAM http://jcam.org.uk/ which is at an alpha state, I 
>haven't used  it yet, however the spec does seem reasonably clear to me

>and  probably wouldn't be too much trouble to implement.
>
> > 
> > 3) Any recommended software?
> > 
> >
> I'm not sure JCAM can be considered recommended, it's alpha (and I had

> some troubles getting it  running), David Webber is as I understand it

> currently working on a project which should see JCAM finished by 
> November.

Looks potentially interesting.  Also looks like something where you need
to have some person power to dedicate to both CAM development and the
regular line of  business if you're going to get anywhere.  No such luck
at the moment (sigh).