Re: [FrameSGML] XML Schema Vs XML DTDs

[Mark Barratt <markb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

DW Emory wrote:

> It's my understanding that even the latest version of FM does not support 
> XML Schemas, and there is little likelihood that future versions of FM will 
> support them either.

Seems a reasonable assumption - unless there is a secret battalion of 
coders rewriting Frame to process Unicode natively.

[snip]

> When you examine the limitations of DTDs described in the second document 
> you can see that a DTD-conformant document may not correspond with the more 
> demanding requirements of the schema for the database in which that 
> document is to be stored. This strongly suggests that your documents should 
> conform to an XML Schema that can track the evolution of the database schema.

Um, up to a point. If you happen to choose or be stuck with using Frame 
for an application which will use a schema-based data store to hold its 
XML output, it would be best to track that schema as closely as 
possible. There are a variety of tools (XML Spy is probably the most 
widely-used) which will help you do that.

However, if the schema requires things that are not deliverable within 
the Frame-based application - in particular, constraints on the format/ 
length of data fields - 'close' won't be close enough. If you *must* use 
Frame in this situation you're going to need XSL/Omnimark 
post-processing *and* human intervention (to evaluate exceptions) to get 
an XML instance file which the destination will accept.

In practice I suggest that this isn't often an issue. Document-centric 
systems tend to not put data type and length constraints on element 
content, while data-centric systems do, because the latter are mainly 
using XML as a mule to cart data from one traditional relational 
database system to another. But why would you use FrameMaker for a 
data-centric application?

best

--
Mark Barratt
Text Matters

Information design: we help explain things using
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