RE: [regrep] Content Management Services

[David RR Webber - XMLGlobal <Gnosis_@compuserve.com>]

Message text written by "Breininger, Kathryn R"
>
I am less enthusiastic about a section for Content Validation Service.
While Content Validation is very important, I am wondering if this would
not
be more appropriate as an implementation specific function?  There are a
number of validation tools available, and it seems that implementations
will
want to pick their own tools.  However, if the section simply stated that
the content must be validated in order to be accepted for submission, that
would address the requirement for validation, but leaves the "how" up to
the
implementation.  I could support this treatment of validation.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Kathryn,

The issue then is consistency and interoperability.

You have to specify some base parameters.  Else you get into
a crap-shoot trying to figure out what is valid and what is not.

And in a confederated model this gets worse fast.

As appealing as it may appear to simply duck this bullet,
the bottom line is this is EXACTLY what is plaguing 
worldwide interoperability and intergration today.

The solution is to have a consistent assembly and 
validation mechanism.

Notice this is NOT the same as a dictat or language
specific vendor specific technology.

Just as EDI did with IMPDEF - you provide a neutral
means to express the rules to do the validation with.
In our case these are expressed in XML.

Vendors can then implement this however they choose.

BUT - and this is the key bit - if I get an error - I can
reference the assembly rules and see what checks
are inherent - and then understand why and make
corrections.

We have to eat our own dog food here - and 
the ebXML assembly gives us what we
need for consistent content and integration.

The BRIM group has worked hard on the 
assembly specifications - and providing a
neutral content handling capability.

Yes- you can use DTD's, schemas or EDI 
content with it - and its based on things like
XPath so all the XML parsers can work with it.
While you have flexibility you have a consistent
set of methods - and that mirrors the existing
approach with registry.

Being able to have a validate_content() method
that is fully consistent with the ebXML architecture,
and also self-referencing to the registry itself
is IMHO exactly what we should be doing here.

Thanks, DW.