[ba-ohs-talk] Fwd: [xml-dev] Penance for misspent attributes
This post seems like a great way to think about elements and attributes.
Here's an example of using attributes for data:
<someTag name="Joe" age="33" />
Here's the same example using elements
<someTag>
<name>Joe</name>
<age>33</age>
</someTag>
Clearly more verbose.
Simon is talking about combining the two in an effective manner.
Cheers
Jack (01)
>From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>
>To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
>
>I've been doing more thinking about the PSVI and poking around at ASN.1
>and Web Services. Then I went outside to work on some drainage ditches,
>and had a few more ideas.
>
>It's striking me more and more that developers, myself included, have
>done a poor job of examining and explaining how markup works and what
>the parts do best. That extends to a key discussion which is generally
>considered dull but radioactive: the elements/attributes distinction.
>
>A lot of people have been storing data in attributes rather than in
>element content. There are lot of reasons for this, ranging from a more
>compact form to simpler processing in SAX. (Attributes are presented as
>a convenient group, while you have to wait for child elements)
>
>The problem with using attributes for data is that there is no direct
>way to associate metadata with attribute content. There is a very easy
>direct way to associate metadata with element content - it's called
>attributes. Adding additional information about attributes requires
>either external sources (DTDs, schemas) or XPath (which I believe XForms
>uses) or various ad-hocery. Direct serialization of any of this gets
>ugly very quickly.
>
>There are a lot of other symptoms of this problem. Namespace issues
>around unprefixed attributes are one, though unqualified is only a
>problem if you assume the attributes are their own atoms of information,
>not merely additional description/refinement of the element type. W3C
>XML Schema has made this situation a bit crazier with the notion of
>unqualified elements, and SOAP's made common practice of it.
>
>To some extent, the misuse arose because attributes had features
>(defaulting, free order, some types, enumeration) that elements didn't
>have. W3C XML Schema condones those practices for attributes and
>extends the same features to elements. Maybe this is an improvement,
>maybe it isn't.
>
>In any case, it seems like many of the PSVI-representation difficulties
>could be relieved by a best practice of using elements for the
>information contained in a document and using attributes exclusively to
>provide additional information about the element.
>
>Separating markup from content - and putting attributes squarely in the
>markup side - seems like one means of at least alleviating the headache.
>
>--
>Simon St.Laurent
>Ring around the content, a pocket full of brackets
>Errors, errors, all fall down!
>http://simonstl.com
>
>
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