Cart
[Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries]
Hi Folks,
Suppose that you document the steps to be taken by an aircraft in its landing procedure:
1. Contact control tower
2. Enter glide slope
3. Correct for wind conditions
Suppose those things must be followed in the sequence listed.
The XML could be designed like this:
<aircraft-approach-procedure>
<transition>Contact control tower</transition>
<transition>Enter glide slope</transition>
<transition>Correct for wind conditions</transition>
</aircraft-approach-procedure>
That design relies (implicitly) on the order of the <transition> elements for denoting the sequence of steps to be taken.
An alternative design is to (explicitly) specify the order. Here is one way to accomplish this:
<aircraft-approach-procedure>
<transition step="2">Enter glide slope</transition>
<transition step="3">Correct for wind conditions</transition>
<transition step="1">Contact control tower</transition>
</aircraft-approach-procedure>
Note that in this design it is not necessary to list the <transition> elements in a particular order since @step explicitly indicates the order.
I vote for the latter as best practice. I invoke this principle as my justification:
Make implicit structures explicit.
What do you think?
/Roger
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] |
