RE: [xml-dev] The Airplane Example (was Re: [xml-dev] Streaming XML)

> Still, if someone was going to use XML in some capacity to 
> shoot missles
> or aid in flying airplanes (which, given the increasing 
> variety of things
> XML is used for, could happen soon!),


One of the biggest mistakes is to assume that systems are only
safety-critical if they physically control the hardware that is capable of
doing the damage.

I came across a stylesheet recently with a bug: it was designed to display
out-of-range data in red, and this wasn't happening, because the code was
doing a string comparison rather than a numeric comparison. I can think of
many scenarios where this could have fatal consequences: admittedly they all
have a human in the loop, but that's not guaranteed to prevent the disaster
happening.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/