- From: Anthony B. Coates <abcoates@londonmarketsystems.com>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 11:08:53 GMT
- To: "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org>, xmlschema-dev@w3.org
** Reply to message from "Roger L. Costello" <costello@mitre.org> on Mon, 27 Jan 2003 13:53:29 -0500 > Does anyone have experience with using the UML-to-XML Schema tools? > That is, does anyone have experience with using those tools which > automatically generate XML Schemas from a UML model? I am interested in > hearing your experience - good or bad. /Roger We tried such tools while I was at Reuters. They work OK, provided you can be flexible about what kind of Schema structure you consider acceptable. However, for people who like to handcraft Schemas, it is very frustrating to try and get these tools to produce exactly the same thing you can produce with a good Schema editor, or a text editor. That's not a criticism, it's just that people who come from the XML world are always working with physical models, and can get very fussy about things like element order. For data-oriented XML (which is where UML makes the most sense), my view is that the UML is best used to construct a logical model of the XML Schema. That is to say, it should define which items of data are children of which other items, but decisions like element order, or whether to use an element or attribute, are probably best left out of the model and instead configured as settings in whatever converts UML to XML. Also, you have the issue that UML structures are not automatically tree structures, so the fact that you are generating XML typically implies some constraints on the UML. Unfortunately, tools don't tend to help enforce those constraints. If you really want to just serialise an object model using XML, then using all of UML is OK, but if you want to use UML as a base for generating more familiar tree hierarchies, you need to constrain it. ISO 15022 v2, which defines a repository of financial field and message definitions, is based on a UML model from which W3C XML Schemas are automatically generated, and so these are the kinds of Schemas that the financial world will be doing much of its work with over the coming years. Cheers, Tony. ==== Anthony B. Coates London Market Systems Limited 33 Throgmorton Street, London, EC2N 2BR http://www.londonmarketsystems.com/ mailto:abcoates@londonmarketsystems.com Mobile/Cell: +44 (79) 0543 9026 [MDDL Editor (Market Data Definition Language), http://www.mddl.org/] [FpML Arch WG Member (Financial Products Markup Language), http://www.fpml.org/] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This Email may contain confidential information and/or copyright material and is intended for the use of the addressee only. Any unauthorised use may be unlawful. If you receive this Email by mistake please advise the sender immediately by using the reply facility in your e-mail software. Email is not a secure method of communication and London Market Systems Limited cannot accept responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of this message or any attachment(s). Please examine this email for virus infection, for which London Market Systems Limited accepts no responsibility. If verification of this email is sought then please request a hard copy. Unless otherwise stated any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not represent those of London Market Systems Limited.
Received on Tuesday, 28 January 2003 06:21:26 UTC