Doesn't XForms duplicate what already exists?

I'll admit that I'm somewhat new to the whole XML scene and I may have
skimmed a few points but it seems to me that a good portion of the XForms
initiative is duplicating what already exists. 

Take the data model for instance. From what I can tell, it is designed to
describe the data structure of XML data. Isn't this exactly what XSchema and
DTDs are supposed to do? Does it really make sense to write one document to
describe valid data and another to describe how to pass valid data? The
should be functionally the same thing. Perhaps XSchema doesn't provide
enough robustness to do all the stuff XForms data model does but shouldn't
that mean that XSchema needs to be changed?

My point is simply this. If we have a standard that already defines valid
data, why is necessary to create a new standard. It seems that writing
XSchema should be no different that writing an XForms data model and we
should, in general, be writing XSchema (or DTD or whatever) for our XML data
anyways, so those who are doing once off or proprietary type stuff shouldn't
have any extra work (and wouldn't have to learn another spec). Those of us
who are implementing a public schema (and there are lots) wouldn't have to
do that particular step. We would leave validation to who ever wrote the
schema and we just have to worry how we used it.

Have a great day.
Adam

Received on Monday, 28 August 2000 17:15:30 UTC