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   Re: [xml-dev] An unclear point with W3C XML 1.0 Specification

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david.lyon@computergrid.net wrote:


> Usually there's no source code, and these days the programmers
> are in India and the call centre is in a difference province
> entirely. And all you want to know is why your payment hasn't
> been processed....
> 
> So keeping the logic in the code isn't very attractive in 2005..

You missed my point completely. The logic is in your code *now*. The 
only thing that knows that ? is a boolean or @ is a date is your code. 
This is a convention you have adopted, and which you have implemented in 
your code. You seem to believe that you have somehow added data types to 
XML, but you haven't. All that's in your document is text, which is 
assigned types by code. You are keeping your logic in your code.


> Therefore, a business analyst needs to be able to go in and figure
> out what is going on, make a business decision and possibly take some
> human action.

And this business analyst magically knows that ? is a boolean and @ is a 
date? I tend to doubt that. Perhaps you've documented this somewhere. if 
so great, but the only real understanding of this is in the code; 
especially when you want to know what someone really means by a number 
or a date or a boolean. Those are not unambiguous terms.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596007647/cafeaulaitA/ref=nosim




 

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