Re: [xml-dev] Which is more declarative? More XMLish?

[Thomas Passin <list1@tompassin.net>]

On 12/2/2017 9:26 AM, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> XML documents oftentimes contain a set of things – a set of books, a set
> of people, a set of transactions, etc.
The only XML documents I've seen contain elements, attributes, textual 
data, PIs, and DTDs.  They never contain books or people, or sets of them.

I don't mean to be all academic here, but I think it would be well to 
start out talking about what can really be in a document.  The 
understanding or interpretation of that document is beyond the scope of 
XML per se.

So a translation of what you seem to want to talk about is "elements in 
an XML document can be considered to represent or map to  sets.  Is 
there a good XML-ish way to represent or define how to represent and 
constrain a set in an XML document?"

Sounds like a job for OWL...

> [clip ...]
>
> Recap: We’ve seen two ways to specify (constrain) a set:
>
> (a) State a property (or properties) that an object must have to qualify
> as a member of the set.
>
> (b) Define a set of rules which generate its members.
There is a third alternative:

(c) Enumerate the members of the set.

TomP