Inheritance/defaulting of attributes

[len bullard]

Andrew Layman wrote:
> 
> I decided to learn about inheritance by talking to people in a number of
> different groups at Microsoft, ranging from products to research, from
> programming languages to databases to knowledge representation.
> 
> I wish I had a good answer for you. I don't.
> 
> Instead, I found that for every single behavior of inheritance (a) some
> people can give a very reasonable justification for it and (b) other
> people can give an equally reasonable justification for why a different
> behavior is needed.
> 
> We are seeing that on this list also.  Clearly inheritance is going to
> be difficult to work out.
> 
> --Andrew Layman
>    AndrewL at microsoft.com

If two groups express different requirements for inheritance, 
then the system should support different requirements for inheritance.

Should inheritance be a facility of XML, or are inheritance 
requirements met else where in the design.

Early in this list, object-oriented ideas were discussed 
and rejected(? - assumption) for XML.  By analogy, SGML 
tools do not explicitly support or express inheritance.
But object-oriented databases have been created that 
use SGML.  Where in those designs is inheritance 
explicitly supported?

Len Bullard
Intergraph Public Safety

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