It seems that trying to force a "flat" typing paradigm onto
somethings that is inherently nested is doomed. It is like
having a programming language where all variables are
global (they cannot be scoped to specific functions).
I'm new to all of this and trying to make sense of it.
Am I missing something tremendously obvious?
Sam
-----Original Message-----
From: Ronald Bourret <rbourret@ito.tu-darmstadt.de>
To: xml-dev@ic.ac.uk <xml-dev@ic.ac.uk>
Date: Saturday, October 17, 1998 7:03 AM
Subject: RE: DTD Question
No. DTDs cannot describe the data type of non-attribute data. It is always
character.
There are various schema languages floating around, some of which (DCD,
SOX), support data types. However, these do not support multiple types for
the same element -- that is, you would need FIRST1 and FIRST2 in your
example.
The only way to apply the constraints you want is in the application. This
is possible in your example because the parents of FIRST are different in
each case.
-- Ron Bourret