RE: [xml-dev] 'is-a' Relationships in XML?

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

> So making an 'employee' element  a child of an 'employer' 
> element clearly implies some semantics that the employer 
> 'has' the employees. 

And if 'employer' is a child of 'employee' then I suppose that the employee
"has" the employer. But I don't think there's any semantics here: you're
just using "has" as a synonym for "is the parent node of". 

If XML is well designed, then you can make guesses about the meaning of the
data from the choice of element names and their hierarchic relationships.
But XML is often badly designed, and your guesses in such cases will be
wrong.

Regards,

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