Jeff Lowery wrote:
>>>That's a bit of a strawman, IMHO. It may have been the
>>
>>intent of the WG to
>>
>>>produce OO in XML, but regardless it seems natural to
>>
>>associate a collection
>>
>>>of properties with a concept.
>>
>>XML has neither the concept of properties nor the concept of
>>concept. ;) I
>>do know a language that has these concepts though.
>
>
> Let's not argue semantics while arguing semantics, okay? I'm talking about
> schema languages, not data. Data must be assigned types though a (schema)
> mechanism.
This is where we disagree. One can have a perfectly good schema that
does not assign types. As long as the schema says what XML is valid on
the wire/disk then I think it has done its job. Assigning a type is an
orthogonal project. Where the description of syntax is necessary for
interchange, the assignment of named types is primarily a convenience
for the programmer. Interface versus implementation.
> ...
> I'm not saying that an XML element or attribute has to be assigned a type.
> Yes, you can treat them purely syntactically. But if that XML is a
> serialization of, say, an object's data, then in many cases it will be
> useful to convey datatype information somehow.
I agree. But I don't see why that "somehow" must be a schema.
Paul Prescod
