To DTD or Schema? Issues for Transformiix, Soblotron etc

Subject: To DTD or Schema? Issues for Transformiix, Soblotron etc
From: MarkH@xxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 12:15:38 +0100
Apologies for reposting the attachment below in full, but there have been no
follow-ups. Hopefully someone can offer me some guidance here about the
validity of using schema's versus DTD's, implications for choice of XML
parser and XSLT processor and so on, which should be of wider interest.

My own application is on Wintel which severely restricts my XML/XSLT
options. So far I have concentrated on:
  CUEsoft have non-validating XML and XSLT close to W3C Recs
  Transformiix looks like an excellent (beta) of a validating XSLT
processor, but see below

Others I am aware of:
  Xalan looks promising but the Wintel code seems significantly behind the
Java development.
  Sablotron might be relevant, but I only came across it yesterday.

I am trying to put create an XML/XSLT application based on one of the above
and a reasonably standards based set of XML "content definitions" - ie DTD's
or Schemas. We were heading for the latter, but David seems to be saying
below that we should go DTD based. Schemas look a lot easier to handle, but
if we can't do our XSLT processing based on them maybe we need to step back.

I would like to hear comments on this general issue and some clarification
of the points raised below, as well as any specific information on the
DTD/Schema support in Transformiix or Soblotron (or anything else, but for
the Wintel platform in particular)

Thanks in advance.

Mark

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Mark Hughes 
> Sent:	Thursday, May 04, 2000 2:30 PM
> To:	xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:	RE: Possible transformiix bug with defaulted attributes.
> 
> Forgive any misguided newbieness here but...
> 
> | -----Original Message-----
> | From:	David Carlisle [SMTP:davidc@xxxxxxxxx]
> | > The problem arises out of conditional match against a missing
> attribute
> | > where the XML schema provides a default value.
> | 
> | there is nothing in either the XML or XSL specs that suggests that
> | any XML application should default attributes from anything other than a
> | DTD. 
> Transformiix appears to accept the use of defauls in my schema when
> validating XML, so I'm confused by the apparent distinction being drawn
> between my schema and an equivalent DTD? Please clarify this for a newbie.
> 
> | And certainly you wouldn't expect anything other than MSXSL to
> | understand this microsoft specific format of schema:
> | 
> | <Schema name="DefaultTestObject"
> xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-data"
> Again I don't understand why this should confuse any parser. The form
> appears consistent with the XML namespace specs and is irrelevant to the
> processing I'm doing. I might just as well put
> xmlns="http://www.agilic.com/default"; or to slightly misquote Tim Bray
> xmlns="AnyOldBollocks" (he was acually using for a named (html) namespace.
> My understanding is that the URN is merely used to partition the name
> spaces
> and it is identity or otherwise of these URN's that can affect processing,
> not their actual form. Hence the validity of something like
> "AnyOldBollocks".
> | 
> |                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> | > but where the attribute is missing only MSXML v3 appears to perform
> | > correctly, 
> | 
> | transformiix is quite correct here.
> Anyone else have an opinion on this (Keith V?) or do I have to produce a
> sample without the dreaded word "microsoft" in it!
> 
> tia
> mark
> 
> 
> 
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