RE: Tags vs PCDATA

Andrew Layman (andrewl@microsoft.com)
Mon, 6 Jul 1998 15:56:35 -0700


You might be interested in checking out what Web-DAV has to offer in this
area. I'm not very familiar with Web-DAV, but I think it addresses this
sort of thing.

-----Original Message-----
From: Per Roger Johannessen [mailto:gt9919a@prism.gatech.edu]
Sent: Monday, July 06, 1998 2:06 PM
To: xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Subject: Tags vs PCDATA

Hi,
Which way is the best way to query a database, with tags or PCDATA? See
below for examples.
Is any of the two alternatives below considered "bad style"?
Does it really matter?

PCDATA-type:
<Message>
<Query>Name</Query>
</Message>

with the response:
<Message>
<Answer>
<Name>Foo</Name>
</Answer>
</Message>

Tag-type:
<Message>
<Query>
<Name/>
</Query>
</Message>

with the same response as above.

As I see it, the tag type has the advantage that it is the same tag
(eg. <Name>) in the query as in the answer. You can limit the queries to
the same tags allowed for the answers in a DTD. On the other hand it takes
a bit more effort to find what you query for.

Best regards,
Per Johannessen

Per Roger Johannessen
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
Email: gt9919a@prism.gatech.edu

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following
message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)