Streams, protocols, documents and fragments

[Michael.Orr at Design-Intelligence.com]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: keshlam at us.ibm.com [mailto:keshlam at us.ibm.com]
> Subject: RE: Streams, protocols, documents and fragments
> 
> Personal opinion: The right way out of the "never-ending document" problem
> is to declare that the stream is a stream of transaction documents, NOT a
> single huge document in its own right.

Exactly. In many cases -- I suspect the vast majority -- the XML DTD or
schema, parse bite size, and transaction considerations all map together
very effectively at a relatively fine granularity. 

The remaining questions, at the level of the containing interchange
stream(s), can be approached as protocol design and separated by
layering from the document considerations. Using document modeling to
describe the stream would simultaneously overkill the structure side and
fail to engage with protocol state issues. 

This is not to deny the requirement for document scalability -- there
are very good reasons to make sure that XML tools are prepared to cope
with huge documents. But: a huge document is not a good implementation
for a transaction stream. 

Regards, 
Mike

----------------------------------------
Michael Orr, CTO, VP R&D
Design Intelligence Inc, Seattle WA USA
http://www.design-intelligence.com
pager:888-688-4609  fax:206-343-7750


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