Schematron design best practices?

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

Hi Folks,

Do you have lots of Schematron rules? If yes, how do you organize them?

I have been reviewing one community's approach to organizing lots of Schematron rules [1]. This community does the following:

a. Within each file have one pattern and in the pattern place one rule and within the rule place one assert.

b. Uniquely identify each pattern, e.g., <sch:pattern id="Books-ID-00015"

c. Give the assert element the same ID as the pattern element, e.g., <sch:assert id="Books-ID-0015"

d. Give the filename the same name as the ID, e.g. Books-ID-0015.sch

What is the rationale for organizing rules in this manner? Why uniquely identify each pattern and each assert? Why limit each file to one pattern, containing one rule, containing one assert?

I am not questioning that these are good design practices, I just want to understand their rationale.

/Roger

[1] http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/CIO/ICEA/Foxtrot/ISM_V10.zip