Re: [xml-dev] Better design: "flatter is better" or "nesting is better" ?

[Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@gmail.com>]

On 10/1/05, Dave Pawson <davep@dpawson.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-09-30 at 14:34 -0500, Peter Hunsberger wrote:

>
> >
> > 3) presentation specific structures that reflect some (perhaps
> > abstract) denormalized, hierarchical presentation model.
>
> I don't know of any hierarchical presentation models Peter, do you?
> Unless you mean docbook or similar, which I don't see as presentation
> layer.
>
> Most of the presentation formats I know of are pretty flat.

Guess that depends on how many levels you want before you consider
something a hierarchy...  Even HTML would seem to qualify (eg, html,
body, table, tr,  td -- then you get to define a cell).  However, just
to make it clear I'm not talking about the final presentation layer,
but rather a model just prior to presentation.  As such, something
like Docbook definitely qualifies.

In spite of all that, the main point is that if you're getting close
to something that humans are going to be dealing with you don't want
the humans jumping through hoops dealing with id and idref (or
similar) to figure out how things are related, but rather you end up
spending the effort to denormalize and create structure so the humans
can figure out how the things are related in a more natural fashion.

The better way of defining the continuum I'm getting at might be the
degree to which the data stream is automated vs. requires human
interaction...

--
Peter Hunsberger