Challenge 1

Kevin Thiele kevin.thiele at BIGPOND.COM
Sat Dec 1 22:12:56 CET 2001


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Croft" <jrc at ANBG.GOV.AU>
To: <TDWG-SDD at USOBI.ORG>
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 8:30 AM
Subject: Re: Challenge 1


| Kevin wrote:
| >I've taken the route of marking up a textual description, using a minimum
of
| >tags. It seems to me that a description comprises a series of features
with
| >values. I've used mixed markup because I wanted to have the mimimum
| >tagging and make maximum use of the text.
|
| Although XML allows mixed content such as Kevin's:
| <Feature><Name>spines</Name>, not developing at each node,
| <Feature Name="Length" MinValue="0">to c.
| <MaxValue>1</MaxValue><Units>cm</Units> long</Feature>
| </Feature>
| and such a document can be validated against a schema, apart from being
| untidy and inelegant, mixed content can pose certain problems when
| attempted to be loaded into a relational database; this is probably not
| going to impress people like Gregor.
|
| Can we agree that although mixed content XML is quite allowable, we are
| going to try and avoid it in the SDD context?


Hey, who said we should aim to make life easier for Gregor? I regard it as a
life ambition to make things harder for software developers, especially
those who insist on cramming mother nature kicking and screaming into a
database!

The mixed content of my suggestion is the thing I worry about most. But if
there are advantages to mixed content (and it seems to me there are) then I
think these should be weighed against the difficulty of dealing with it.
Once we have more alternate solutions to challenge 1 we can deal with the
advantages/disadvantages of particular solutions. I wouldn't like to
preclude mixed content at this early stage - let's knock it on the head a
bit further down the track.

Cheers - k




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