Re: XSchema question

Ron Bourret (rbourret@dvs1.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de)
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:40:10 +0200


> But don't you prefer completely crazy hairball of a problem over simple
> problems? <G> Thanks for the help. I think I'll continue to kick the
> hairball on my own just for 'kicks'.

I think this is a really nice usage of XSchema and no different from most other
XSchema applications -- the deciding factor is that the application gathers
schema information at run time, rather than having it hard-coded. In general,
the code that does this shouldn't care if the schema information changes
half-way through the file.

So by all means, continue to play. It will give us more concrete data about
implementing XSchema and perhaps open some new ground for 2.0. I would also
point out that, not only is this idea useful for validation, it is also useful
for building database storage structures on the fly.

As I mentioned before, we are unlikely to address this in 1.0, but I would
suggest the following (non-guaranteed) semantics for forward compatibility:

1) The XSchema applies to everything following it until the next XSchema is hit.
2) Each XSchema completely replaces the previous XSchema.

-- Ron Bourret