Re: Write to a XML document

[Buck <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx>]

> > I'm having difficulty understanding why we don't just write directly to
> > XML. Something to do with validity checking.
>
> Not knowing the details, validity checking most likely has something to do
> with XML Schema Definitions (XSD's) which are used to dictate relationship
> structure and allowable field content (i.e. only allowing an int in an order
> number field) among other things.

As Aaron said, this is a 'sanity check' sort of thing to ensure that 
your XML is well formed; that each <start> has a corresponding </start> 
and the contents are sane too (no CHAR in a NUMBER field, etc.  Having a 
converter create genuine XML out of pseudo-XML is one way to help ensure 
that the resulting XML is well formed.

That doesn't mean that you can't emit well formed XML from your RPG 
code.  If you are careful, you can certainly emit XML that passes any 
sanity check with flying colours.

Although I got some heat over it, I wrote an XML emitting application 
entirely in native RPG, writing directly to an IFS stream file.  I was 
able to sanity check the data before it went into the XML file and 
produce a 'data elements in error' report that mapped back to our 
application database elements.  That's pretty hard to do using an 
external validator.
  --buck