At 07:51 PM 5/6/99 +0200, Langer, Paul wrote:
We are currently developing "a data store that uses the internal structure
of
the document to keep it hierarchically".
I see no chance for media types to be of any help for determining the
structure of XML documents. Do you think of one media type for each and
every DTD (or whatever schema we use tomorrow)?
XML promises to be self-describing data; if it is not possible to get all
necessary information out of the XML document itself, something is
broken in XML.
I'm not arguing that all of the information about the structure of the
documents should be provided in the MIME type - one media type per DTD
makes even less sense in a world where DTDs are not required. Nonetheless,
for many well-defined XML document types, it seems worthwhile.
Indeed, XML's promise of 'self-describing data' is important.
Unfortunately, we also need useful shorthand descriptions of that data so
that we don't waste lots of time transmitting information only to find that
it wasn't really what we wanted. I shouldn't have to download an entire
text/xml or application/xml document only to find out that the contents are
in a form that my application isn't interested in.
Self-describing information doesn't reduce the value of a shorthand
description that conveys useful meaning. This doesn't mean that XML is
broken - it just means that shorthand descriptions are very useful.
You may not find MIME types to be of any use within your hierarchical
structure, but I think it's easy enough to say that they would be useful
for providing shorthand descriptions of what you've got and whether or not
they should be stored in your system, not to mention whether the user
wanted them in the first place.
Simon St.Laurent
XML: A Primer
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http://www.simonstl.com