Re: [xml-dev] Benefits of validation

[noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com]

On Feb 1, 2008 4:50 PM, Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Can anyone point me to articles on the benefits of validation, which
> are targetted at the lay person?
>
> Something that explains the reasons why schemas are needed, and why
> it's a good idea to have a "contract" between two people
that speak
> using XML.

Well, it's not an article, and I'm guessing
that much of it is aimed at a slightly more technical audience than you
might have in mind, but in 2002 I gave a DevCon talk, the slides for which
Sam Ruby has kindly posted on his Intertwingly blog at [1].  At least
one of the slides nets out my views on that, though at a pretty high level.
 In case it's of help, the contents of the pertinent slide (#9) are:

What are schemas for?

* Contracts:  agreeing on formats

* Tool building: know what the data will be before the first instance shows up
    * Database integration
    * User interface tools
    * Programming language bindings

* Validation:  make sure we got what we expected

Noah

[1] http://intertwingly.net/slides/2002/devcon/SchemaSecrets.ppt

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Noah Mendelsohn 
IBM Corporation
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Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
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