RE: [xml-dev] The year is 2027, and we need to examine archived XML docu

["Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>]

> They'll probably need some kind of documented schema, because 
> for complex schemas, the meaning of some of the markup won't 
> be [obvious?].

Ann Wrightson gave a talk on HL7 at Extreme a few weeks ago, and I was
frankly appalled. The level of abstraction adopted in the encoding of this
data is so high that the chance of anyone understanding it who hasn't been
immersed in the subject for years is to my mind near zero. The concept of
data being human-readable and tags being self-defining has gone completely
out of the window. I suspect the "documented schema" in this case is more
like 65,000 pages than 6,500 - though I'm guessing. Yet this data (medical
records) is exactly what researchers will want to be studying in 50 or 100
years time.

Even when the data is being used today, I would think the risk of
miscommunications is very high when the data is so complex and
un-self-explanatory.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/