Object-oriented serialization (Was Re: Some questions)

[Paul Prescod]

David Megginson wrote:
> 
> How does the schema tell me that foo represents a container for a
> collection of objects, bar represents an object, and hack and flurb
> represent the object's properties?

It probably doesn't, but Matthew is right that you could imagine a
schema language that DOES

> Object exchange, while
> important, represents only one of many layers that can be build on top
> of XML, and if XML Schemas start trying to solve high-level problems
> for every specific domain, it will become an unimplementable mess.

I would argue that every domain, including documents, has a concept of
"objects" and a concept of "properties." XML's inability to represent
this is, in my opinion, a major flaw. It would be nice if schemas could
work around that flaw but I still think that there is a place in the
world for an instance-only syntax for objects and properties.

> RDF already made a similar mistake by mixing together a spec for
> object encoding in XML with a spec for representing knowledge about
> Web pages.

I agree that this was a mistake and it befuddled me for a while. I see
it as a different situation, however, because I can't imagine a problem
domain that does NOT need to know about structured objects and their
properties.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
"I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more
specific." --Lily Tomlin

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