On Feb 1, 2008 4:50 PM, Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@g...>
wrote:

> Can anyone point me to articles on the benefits of validation, which

> are targetted at the lay person?

>

> Something that explains the reasons why schemas are needed, and why

> it's a good idea to have a "contract" between two people
that speak

> using XML.



Well, it's not an article, and I'm guessing
that much of it is aimed at a slightly more technical audience than you
might have in mind, but in 2002 I gave a DevCon talk, the slides for which
Sam Ruby has kindly posted on his Intertwingly blog at [1].  At least
one of the slides nets out my views on that, though at a pretty high level.
 In case it's of help, the contents of the pertinent slide (#9) are:









What are schemas for?



* Contracts:  agreeing on formats



* Tool building: know what the data will
be before the first instance shows up

    * Database integration

    * User interface tools

    * Programming language bindings



* Validation:  make sure we got what
we expected





Noah



[1] http://intertwingly.net/slides/2002/devcon/SchemaSecrets.ppt



--------------------------------------

Noah Mendelsohn 

IBM Corporation

One Rogers Street

Cambridge, MA 02142

1-617-693-4036

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