Re: [xml-dev] U.S. Federal Goverment's Data Reference Model (DRM)XML Schema

["J.Pietschmann" <j3322ptm@yahoo.de>]

Michael Kay wrote:
>>My conclusion: design objects and message separately, and use a tool
>>to check whether they fit together.
> 
> Similar to my conclusion. But what should the tool look like?

I used hand-crafted Java programs for lifting DDL to My Own Private
SpecML, some hand-written XML containing some mappings and XSLT to
generate reports. The toolkit was started well before XSD tools were
available. DDL parsing is necessary because that's really the only
way to get at the actually used DB schema (never trust any other DB
documentation if there are DB admin accounts floating around).

If I had to start from scratch now, I'd probably take another look
at the state of the art of RDF tools, and might consider storing
rules for uplifting the DB schema and mapping meta-rules in RDF. I've
seen some Really Cool demos of RDF visualizers which hopefully beat
the XSLT->GraphViz chain, and tools which just might be graphical RDF
editors.

J.Pietschmann