Object-oriented serialization (Was Re: Some questions)

[Matthew Gertner]

David Megginson wrote:
> Would you require schema processing, then, for object exchange (or in
> other words, would there be no equivalent of the DTD-less XML
> document)?

Yes and no. A schema-less XML document is absolutely fine for most
things. If you need object semantics then you need a schema. The good
news is that, for things like metadata attached to documents, the number
of schemas will most likely be small and well-known. If I have the
schema for the Dublin Core on my machine already, for example, then I
can interpret any instance based on the Dublin Core. Obviously the
knowledge about the schema can be compiled into specific classes for
processing instances based on this schema, as I already mentioned. This
will no doubt be necessary for efficiency; it would be unrealistic to
reparse the schema every time an instance needs to be processed.

Cheers,
Matthew

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