question for a friend

[Daniel Austin]

Lisa,

	This sort of structure cannot be represented easily in XML, since it
cannot be mapped to a simple heirarchichal tree structure. In practice, what
usually happens is that a third element is used to contain the internal
paragraphs and additional information beyond the DTD is required for
complete validity testing/processing. But your friend is correct in the
sense that there are (many) data structures that cannot be mapped to XML;
XML really applies only to semi-structured data sets where relationships
between elements are restricted to parent-child relationships - a
heirarchical tree. 
Additional, more complex relationships among elements must be specified
outside of XML.

Regards,

D-

*********************************************************************
Daniel Austin, Director of Research and Development, CNET
daniela at cnet.com    415-395-7800 x1438
"To change the old into the new, and the shapes of things to come..."  




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lisa Rein [mailto:lisarein at finetuning.com]
> Sent: Thursday, June 10, 1999 4:14 PM
> To: xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
> Subject: question for a friend
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> A friend of mine asked me a question I didn't feel like I gave him a
> good enough answer for, so I bring it to you...
> 
> 
> say we have a part of a document below (probably a part of a very long
> document).  Yes i KNOW this is misnested.  this is the point.  he was
> saying that this kind of context couldn't be represented using a
> well-formed structure:
> 
> <realestate>
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> <newyork>
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> 
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> </realestate>
> 
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
> </new york>
> 
> where the two paragraphs in the middle are "realestate:newyork", but
> only if they are taken together.
> 
> 
> No matter how I represented the structure above in a 
> well-formed manner,
> I couldn't quite pull off the "only when taken together" part.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> thanks,
> 
> lisa
> 
> 
http://www.finetuning.com

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