XML and behavior description

[Thierry Thelliez]

Hello,

I need to find a solution to exchange complex definitions.

I have the following difficulties:

1- Dynamic behavior

These 'Entities' can have behavior as value of their attributes.
I guess I could do something like
<!ENTITY % script "CDATA"> and use %script where needed
but:
1-a- How can I define the language used ?
something like <script LANGUAGE="JavaScript"> ?

1-b- These functions/methods/procedures should respect formatted
parameters in input and in output. How can we document that ?

1-c- I guess this could be very similar as documenting in XML an
OO code.

2- Composition

The Entities will depend on several others. Is that a 'link' in XML ?


Maybe it will be easier with an example :-) Let's assume that we
write a code to simulate a car engine.

The final XML could be an ENTITY engine including all the parts number.
But these parts are experimental. A simple pipe is described in a very
generic way by it's author. There will be pipe's parameters like
length (assuming that it is a straight pipe), physics description (behavior)
like flow dynamic (simulation code).

Using OO words, an instance Engine will contain instances of the
class Pipe (and other more complex parts !). The difficult part is that
the consortium want to exchange instances of the class Engine as well
as versions of the class Pipe (or any new 'generic' part created).

Do you see XML fitting these requirements ? Already done somewhere ?

Fom my OO eyes, I see that as a problem of exchanging not only instances
but also class (version) definitions. Of course there is a big configuration
management problem but that's not an XML issue (description language).


Thanks
Thierry



--

.....................................................................
. Thierry Thelliez                   Los Alamos National Laboratory .
.   Email: tgt at lanl.gov                                      CIC-15 .
.   Voice: (505) 665 8631                                   MS M310 .
.     Fax: (505) 665 5725                       Los Alamos NM 87545 .
.     URL: http://www.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/phone/113845             USA .
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