XML trade off 1 - DTD vs XML Schema

[Rick Jelliffe]

 From: Don Park <donpark at quake.net>

>It is my view that the XML Schema will win over after six months to a
year
>of further confusion over schema format and continued maturation of the
W3C
>XML Schema spec.  Uncertainty in the dynamics of change in this area
seems
>rather low, at least to me.

I remember seeing a headline from a PC magazine in about 1991 saying
"UNIX is
dead".  But here we are in the late 1990s and Linux installations
(supposedly) are
more than Win98 (in West Europe).

Uncertainty in the dynamics of change is prudent.  On the Internet,
there are
hard limits (in particular from bandwidth) which even the most assured
comments
from company spin doctors (I don't mean Don here) cannot overcome.

The XML Schema supporters have never made any response to questions
several people have raised over the last year questioning the
practicality
(*as a DTD replacement*) of a verbose syntax: who wants to download
a 100K schema for a 1K instance?

This size difference alone means that XML Schemas will often be used in
different circumstances to DTDs: the tradeoffs are different.  XML
Schemas cannot "win" because they run in a different race to DTDs.


Rick Jelliffe


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