Re: XML and Ada was RE: A standard package for config files is needed

[Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>]

Robert C. Leif <rleif@rleif.com> wrote:
: From: Bob Leif
: To: Stephen Leake et al.
: 
: Please validate against a schema. Schemas have a type structure similar
: to Ada's. Hence, validation is useful. DTDs are an old SGML construct,
: that will, hopefully, eventually disappear.

Doubt it, and Goldfarbs comments on this seem to indicate, at
least to me, that DTDs have and will have very good uses. Why put
everything about data in schemas and not in applications? ONly
reason I can think of is lack of (human) communication of
data exchange parties. That is: Write a good DTD indicating
what you expect to be in the data and make this DTD known to
the other end. Then write appropritate programs.
Note also that there is a convention based
way to put type information into attributes. It's just not as
standardised as schemas might be.

I can't think of a software library that automatically creates composed
data objects of some (how?) automatically created type by reading an
input stream that follows a schema. Somewhere I have to decide what
information to expect... Am I missing something?

-- Georg