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Mike Champion wrote: > I lean toward a synthesis of the positions that John Cowan > and Walter Perry were taking earlier in this non-silly > thread: Tell your information suppliers what format > you would really and truly prefer them to communicate to > you in, but be prepared to "mine" whatever they send you > to extract the information that *you* need to do *your* job. That seems like a very reasonable approach, combining the hopes of the "agreed upon XML formats" crowd with the expectations of the "reality will include diversity" crowd. It doesn't make a lot of sense to send people random junk, but demanding ironclad agreements worked out by committee before communications can start doesn't necessarily lead to workable communications. (And sometimes, of course, random junk is what have and what you need to work with...) > Schema validation can be a useful part of that mining > operation (sortof like assaying the purity of the ore), but > can't be the formal contract between producers and consumers, > for purely human reasons. Humans are ornery, and expecting computers to enforce contracts in their differently ornery style doesn't seem like a great answer. Edd Dumbill had a nice piece a while ago with some similar conclusions, I think: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/10/24/selfishtag.html ------------- Simon St.Laurent - SSL is my TLA http://simonstl.com may be my URI http://monasticxml.org may be my ascetic URI urn:oid:1.3.6.1.4.1.6320 is another possibility altogether
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