Hi Roger, et al.

It seems to me that no matter what you want to call the relationship, it
comes down to whether the recipient of the data understands how to turn
that raw data into information they can use.  No matter what you choose
to call the element, someone has to be able to look at it and make some
kind of judgment about what that name means relative to the values inside
the element.  If, for instance, I spoke Russian as my primary language,
"Assignment", "Association", "RelatedTo", "IsWorkingOn", or whatever are
all just abstract strings of letters.  No matter what you choose to call
the element, it can be misinterpreted unless there is some set of rules
established to indicate what the label means.  For example, "Assignment":
Is the lot assigned to the picker?  Is the picker assigned to the lot?
That's even assuming that I already know what "assign" means...

Sorry I don't have the proper training/vocabulary/etc. that most on this
list have.  These are just the rambling thoughts of a stupid techie trying
to solve problems my company wants solved.

Thanks for listening,

Joe Mayer
Information Systems
Kathrein Inc, Scala Division
Medford, OR

-----Original Message-----
From: Roger L. Costello [mailto:costello@m...]
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 6:40 AM
To: 'XML Developers List'
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] What is coupling? [Was: 3 XML Design Principles]


Hey Robert,

>> <Lot id="1">
>>       .
>> </Lot>
>> <Picker id="John">
>>       .
>> </Picker>
>> <Assignment picker="John" lot="1"/>

>I would hate to have transform this...

Suppose that the purpose of your transformation was to move Picker John onto
another Lot. (For example, a stylesheet that models the movement of Pickers
on a Vineyard)  Wouldn't this form support such a "movement transformation"
beautifully?

Simply locate:

    Assignment/@picker="John"

And then change:

    @lot

But this is getting off the topic: what is coupling?  /Roger




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