Re: [xml-dev] What are the practical, negative consequences ofthinking t

[Dimitre Novatchev <dnovatchev@gmail.com>]

I don't think "metadata" is an important concept related to attributes.

What is important is:

Attributes are appropriate for representing a set of name-value pairs,
where all names are distinct and the order of appearing on the
name-value pairs is not important.

Whenever these conditions hold, making a decision *not* to represent
the set of name-value pairs as attributes has at least two bad
consequences:

  1. Confusing and thus messing up with readability (we need to
express an additional restriction that all these elements must appear
exactly once -- another additional rule to express is that these
elements can appear in any order. If we used attributes, no such rules
need be added at all.

  2. Possible performance degradation: elements are much more complex
and occupy more memory than attributes.


Cheers,
 Dimitre.

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 7:24 AM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> Consider this XML:
>
> <Book binding="hardcover">
>     <Title>Software Abstractions</Title>
>     <Author>Daniel Jackson</Author>
> </Book>
>
> I often hear people say that attributes are metadata. For example, @binding is metadata.
>
> David Carlisle likes to remind me that there is nothing in the XML specification which says that attributes are metadata. In fact, the XML specification does not even use the word "metadata."
>
> So when I hear people talking about attributes being metadata, I channel David Carlisle and tell them that attributes are not metadata.
>
> But I'm thinking this is a lost cause. The belief that attributes are metadata is too widespread.
>
> Besides, what difference does it make if people think that attributes are metadata? Can you give me a concrete, practical example showing where bad things happen because someone thought that attributes are metadata?
>
> /Roger
>
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-- 
Cheers,
Dimitre Novatchev
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