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Parang Saraf wrote:
>
> Someone told me that there is an international agency that has defined
> some standard DTDs/Templates for XML and one should design the
> database according to them. My database is storing information
> obtained from buoys located at the Gulf of Maine and the information
> is like salanity at different depths, wind speed and direction,
> pressure at different depths etc.
>
> I did some google searching but was not able to find anything related
> to this.
There are many *specialized* associations that define standard XML
schemas for their domain. If you haven't found one for your own field,
the chances are it doesn't exist, or is not considered authoritative by
actual practitioners.
There is a deeper question here as to whether it is better to devise a
specialized XML format for each particular domain or to use
"microformat" conventions to convey your specialized semantics in a
generic format. For example, if your data was mostly going to be
displayed in browsers, it might make sense to use HTML table format for
your data; if it will be mostly analyzed with spreadsheet programs, use
the native XML format of Excel or OpenOffice, whichever works best given
the producers and consumers. (In that case, you probably wouldn't need
to worry about the XML much, just define a "standard" spreadsheet and
use the XML it produces).
Anyway, if there is no accepted standard in your domain, you've got some
work to do to figure out if XML is really worth the cost (might plain
text or CSV files work just as well for you?), whether to define your
own XML format or another, and how to get that format to work with the
actual tools you use to produce, store, and analyze data.
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