Calculating how many XML elements will be needed, given the numberof dat

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

Suppose the below Bookstore grammar is expressed in XML Schema. How many XML elements will be needed to mark up this data:

Wisdom of Crowds non-fiction Springer Society of Mind non-fiction Harvard Press

Using a fantastic result from formal languages, one can calculate the number of elements purely by knowing the number of data items. 

Note: "Wisdom of Crowds" counts as one data item, "non-fiction" as a second, and so forth.

I created a mini-tutorial which describes the result from formal language and I apply the result to the Bookstore example:

http://xfront.com/formal-languages/Transforming-Context-Free-Grammars-to-Chomsky-Normal-Form.pptx 

Formal languages rocks!

Here is the grammar:

Bookstore 	--> Book  Bookstore
Bookstore 	--> Title  Other
Book 		--> Title  Other
Other 		--> Genre  Publisher
Title 		--> "Wisdom of Crowds" 
Title 		--> "Six Great Ideas" 
Title 		--> "Society of Mind" 
Genre 		--> "fiction" 
Genre 		--> "non-fiction"
Publisher 	--> "Springer" 
Publisher 	--> "MIT Press" 
Publisher 	--> "Harvard Press"