Re: [xml-dev] Which is the Authority: The Schema or the Text?

[Steve Newcomb <srn@coolheads.com>]

Which one says what an instance means?  For me at least, that question
is not orthogonal to yours.  It goes to the heart of yours.  Your
question is (I take it): how should the conflict be resolved?

If you know what the offending instance is supposed to mean, you have
the best available evidence for resolving the conflict.  The purpose of
an instance isn't to conform to a schema or to a spec.  Rather, the
purpose of an instance is to convey information.

On 12/19/2013 11:51 AM, cbullard@hiwaay.net wrote:
> A mundane question:  given a specification with schemas and text
> descriptions of values, if these are in conflict which one is
> authoritative?  IOW, would you ignore the text and use the schema values
> as declared, or modify the schema to match the text>?
> 
> All too often, upstream data designers are not reading the schemas. 
> Instead they rely on the text examples (eg, diagrams or instances).  So
> one sees problems such as a string specification with multiple parts
> that are declared as a pattern (regex) and the parts and patterns don't
> match (e.g., lengths are not the same).  I suspect this is a result of
> having multiple spec authors and insufficient quality checks in
> implementations.   Normally one would report these and it gets cleaned
> up but when the spec is already in the field, yadda.
> 
> len
> 
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