Re: Complex Type Definition Schema Component (Structures)

The principle goal for the organization of the components in the 
specification was ot meet the need for a rigorous and reasonably compact 
representation of the information needed (not the specific data 
structures!) to represent a schema.  The sort of aggressive polymorphism 
used in the specification makes it more compact. 

With all due respect, you are presuming a goal for the schema components 
which is in fact a non-goal (or at best a nice to have).  While there are 
surely cases in which you can do straightforward mappings of the abstract 
components to data structures in one programming language or another, that 
is not a goal for the design of the components, nor is it necessarily a 
good idea in all cases even.  High performance implementations may well 
want to use quite different representations of the same information even 
if a straight mapping is possible.  Surely I would expect that components 
like model group, particle, etc. will often disappear into compiled state 
machines, or the like.  On the other hand, in the many cases where a 
straightforward mapping meets some particular need, go for it.  By the 
way, several early users commented positively on the degree to which, in 
spite of it being a non-goal,  the components were effective in helping to 
organize an attack on the fundamental problem of parsing schema documents: 
figuring out how to organize the information in a useful way.

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Noah Mendelsohn                                    Voice: 1-617-693-4036
Lotus Development Corp.                            Fax: 1-617-693-8676
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Cambridge, MA 02142
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