XML Schema Vs. DTD - Re: why no doc type declaration and PIs in SOAP?

Hello all,

Excuse me novice for dropping in into so highly specific discussion. As it
happens, I have to relate on human's kindness for getting some more info in
the labyrinth of abbervs ;-)

I am a project co-ordinator with some (sound but rather dusty, as it turns
out) IT knowledge from the pre-Internet era. Presently, I am interested in
setting up and proposing to my management a project for hosting a repository
for trade documentation schemata conformant to the UN/CEFACT recommendation
for trade facilitation (http://www.unece.org/cefact/trafix/bdy_recs.htm).
The idea is to create schema equivalents of the worldwide unified trade
documents some of which carry responsibility and material interest by their
mere existence, form, signature, holder etc. Most of them are, in paper,
more or less unified by the efforts of the respective industries,
governments erc. grouped in national specialised bodies called PRO
commitees. The Bulgarian PRO commitee considers the implementation of these
standards in such schemata for Bulgaria, thus creating the Bulgarian 'forms'
to fill in for e-trade.

When I started to study the subject few months ago I was convinced that XML
Schema is a shiny new technology that will replace DTD and focused on
studying the details of it. Now maybe it's time to ask a question or two to
people who really know:

1. Can you give me an idea which technology - XML or DTD - is in your
opinion better to use for this specific need with regard to the repository's
comlpexity, and why it's better? The DTD/schema should be a lite version
available even for small businesses with elder PC who use some shareware
parser and, of course, hosting it should cost us as few as possible
ressource in equipment, software, maintainance etc. On the other hand, it is
desirable to be maximally foolproof with regards to the contents allowed for
each defined tag, and maybe using one or other technology is important in
this context.

2. How does a DTD/schema repository work - is it a kind of secure web server
free for viewing, or it has to have other features implemented (and what
kind of features)? Any idea about how much time and ressource its
implementation and maintainance costs?

3. Ideally, if there already exists such trade schema/DTD repository known
to you that could be extenden/internationalised or otherwise used, can you
give me a link?

4. Any hints as to which specifications are relevant to the DTD vs XML
Schema discussion and where to find some background reading on it? Same for
repositories and their implementation.

Thanks a lot in advance for helping me in the jungle of info.

Kremena Gotcheva
http://www.bcci.bg

Received on Friday, 21 September 2001 12:18:14 UTC