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Subject: Re: [xml-dev] Designing XML to Support Information Evolution
[Comments at end] Michael Champion wrote: > > On May 17, 2004, at 10:20 AM, Roger L. Costello wrote: > > > > > 1. How you structure your information in XML has a tremendous impact > > on the processing of the information. > > > > 2. Hierarchy makes processing information hard! There exists a > > relationship between hierarchy of information and the complexity of > > code to process the information. The relationship is roughly: the > > greater the hierarchy, the greater the complexity of code to process > > the information (Some hierarchy is good, of course. But the amount > > of hierarchy that is good is probably much less than one might > > imagine, certainly less than I thought, as described above.) > > > > 3. Flat data is good data! Flatten out the hierarchy of your data. > > It makes the information flexible and easier to process. > > > > 4. Order hurts! Requiring a strict order of the information makes for > > a brittle design. It is only when I allowed the lots and pickers to > > occur in any order that the flexibility and simplicity kicked in. > > > > Comments? /Roger > > I'm wondering if you haven't rediscovered the relational model? (Or at > least you've discovered the importance of "normalization" in the > relational sense even in the XML context). But why bother with XML at > all (except maybe as a data interchange format) here? Wouldn't a > relational reporting tool be much easier than XSLT with this data > structure? > > C.J. Date gave a speech recently > http://searchdatabase.techtarget.com/originalContent/ > 0,289142,sid13_gci962948,00.html complaining that XML is trying to take > over the world. Maybe he has a point :-) I certainly don't agree with > all he's saying, but if you are modeling data rather than exchanging > documents, I would think that the relational model would be the > starting point until you run into its walls. > > Clearly if flexibility is paramount, order and hierarchy are a pain, > and there's not much gain *if* you have unique identies for everything > and the identity is all you need to know to figure out what to do with > the information. > > On the other hand, if *context* is important, i.e. the intepretation / > semantics / meaning / processing paradigm of some bit of information > depends more on where it stands in relation to other information, then > order and hierarchy are critical. That's where the XML "data model" > (by which I mean "fairly deeply hierarchical labelled trees in which > order is preserved", not the InfoSet per se) comes into its own. This very issue of context is part of the mission of the OASIS Content Assembly Mechanism (CAM) TC[1], whose specifications are OASIS Committee Draft Specifications. The only thing that I see standing in the way of CAM being as successful as it possibly can be is vendor adoption - as of now, there are not an adequate amount of vendors (IMHO) that have announced support for this emerging standard. Kind Regards, Joe Chiusano Booz | Allen | Hamilton Strategy and Technology Consultants to the World [1] http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cam > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > The xml-dev list is sponsored by XML.org <http://www.xml.org>, an > initiative of OASIS <http://www.oasis-open.org> > > The list archives are at http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ > > To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list use the subscription > manager: <http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/index.php> -- Kind Regards, Joseph Chiusano Associate Booz | Allen | Hamilton
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