Why XML data typing is hard (was Re: Internal subset equivalent in new schema proposals?)

[Murray Maloney]

At 02:23 PM 11/27/98 -0500, david at megginson.com wrote:
>Murray Maloney writes:
>
> > Essentially you are saying that since it would be possible to
> > design poorly with a given set of tools, we should not provide
> > these design tools.
>
>No, I think that Murray has misunderstood -- I'm trying to manage
>expectations by explaining that the XML data-typing problem is far
>more difficult than a typical anglophone North American SQL specialist
>might expect, and that the potential rewards are smaller than people
>might hope.

I don't think that I misunderstood at all.

I agree that XML data-typing could be a very difficult problem.
Especially if we insist on making it so. But I think that 
rewards are potentially much greater than you are allowing.
And I think that we can take small steps toward data nirvanna
-- I think that the greatest danger lies in the belief that
the importance of an ideal or complete solution should hold up
the next reasonable step.
>
>I will happily use data-typing once it's approved, but I don't imagine
>that it will generate more than a tiny, incremental gain in my
>productivity or in the integrity of my information (with database
>programming, you always end up writing the hard validations by hand
>anyway).

Well, reasonable people can disagree, but I wonder why in this case.
>
>And, of course, any data-typing standard blessed by the XML-Syntax WG
>will have to be fully Internationalised -- a standard that works only
>for English-speaking Perl hackers in the Silicon Valley needs to be
>designed by Perl hackers in the Silicon Valley, not by the W3C.

Well, I qualify only inasmuch as English is one of the languages 
which I read/write/speak. So, that dart seems to have missed 
me as a target -- 404. I am not interested in a datatyping solution
that is only usable by db or Perl hackers. See SOX.





Murray Maloney, Esq.          Phone: (905) 509-9120
Muzmo Communication Inc.      Fax:   (905) 509-8637
671 Cowan Circle              Email: murray at muzmo.com
Pickering, Ontario 		Email: murray at yuri.org
Canada, L1W 3K6    		

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)