Well-formed vs. valid

[roddey at us.ibm.com]

>I would propose a type of XML parser that takes a well-formed or valid
>document, validates it against a DTD (or any other accepted form of
>structure description) of the application's choice, and then issues
>streaming events to the application. Consider it a DOM that does a
>tree match on an application chosen DTD and then emits SAX calls. The
>application would be guaranteed to be receiving valid elements and
>thus not need its own data validation code.
>
>The line between the application and 'XML' is currently viewed as the
>application is hooked onto DOM, SAX, or some other XML parser of a
>file at the level of elements. The XML structural description in a DTD
>is not used, except if the document (not the application) calls for
>validation. This separation is also represented by modeling on the
>basis of a file rather than a stream.
>

FYI, our (IBM's) new version 2 architecture parsers do this. We have a
pluggable architecture, and one of the plug ins is a validator. The low
level scanner uses this to validate content before it sends it out through
the internal even APIs. So, if you are wiring together a SAX style parser,
you just wire the internal events to the SAX events and you have a
validating SAX parser (actually we have that combination already provided
for you as a canned parser, but you can do other variations as well.)



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