RE: XML Attributes

["Stone, Brad V (TC)" <bvstone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: XML Attributes

Mike,

 

I'm on your side on this issue.  We've done some XML with other companies (ok, you made me say it, B2B... eewww... a buzzword) and never have we seen a DTD.  We never even see standards on XML docs from the same comanpany.  One XML form may have ShipAddress as a tag, and then another on may have ShipToAddress.    

 

So, I still think Mikes original question stands.  If the data is...

 

<quantity>99999999</quantity>

 

and the DTD says it's 3 numeric, is the value 999 or 99999999, or is it invalid data?  What if it's

<quantity value="999999999/> or something even wacky-er.

 

I think that because of XML, bandaids were made up such as DTDs and Schemas to fix these types of problems, but because it's such a simplistic idea it just made things worse.  The need for some pretty sophisticated (bordering on AI) is needed for this "simple" form of data transfer. 

 

XML was never meant to replace X.12 or be used for EDI, but some brilliant person who's never done EDI probably saw it and said "Hey, I can read that.  I can't read X.12, so this must be a better EDI format." 

 

XML used for web pages is a good idea, but EDI, no.

 

My .03.

 

Brad

-----Original Message-----
From: Pantzopoulos, Mike [mailto:mikepantzopoulos@mynd.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 9:36 PM
To: 'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
Subject: RE: XML Attributes

thanks Leif. We have a DTD, and I have read the book a zillion times but have never seen reference to such syntax. And I've hunted through just about every site offering DTD tutorials. This must be a standard they introduced last week. Now hunting around looking for reference material.This stuff is so mickey-mouse. So what happenns if the field is alphanumeric? How do you code for a range of special characters? do you have to know the ASCII collating sequence? The problem with the PC world is that of shifting standards. Going through this exercise makes me feel guilty about taking 5250 for granted. 

Thanks again. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Leif Svalgaard [mailto:leif@leif.org]
Sent: Friday, 17 November 2000 12:29
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
Subject: Re: XML Attributes

From: Pantzopoulos, Mike

s there some mysterious way that XML allows the developer to define some more sophisticated attributes than just a string of indeterminate length? (as long as it's between two "well-formed" tags?

===> to be a valid XML document you must include a DTD. Within the DTD you can

define elements to be just as you like them: e.g.:   NUM3:= [0-9][0-9][0-9]

to indicate an element consisting of exactly 3 valid digits.