* W. Eliot Kimber
>
> Do you mean the definition of the data model or instances of data that
> conform to it?
Instances of the data model, hamlet.xml, for example. To be really precise
(as I should have been all along): in-memory instances encoded as electrical
impulses in the memory chips of a particular computer (or a set of computers),
possibly swapped out to disk, but part of runtime memory of a specific
program.
> If you mean the latter, again, we have defined serialization mechanisms
> that allow the data instances to be reliably transmitted: [actual examples
> snipped]
Let me quote myself: "In other words: you must have [a] serialization
syntax." Whether it is XML or serialized CORBA objects is immaterial, but
you do need a syntax to ensure that the information persists and that you
can transmit it to another computer or program.
So the question remains: do you need an explicit specification of the data
model?
--Lars M.