On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 8:11 PM, Simon St.Laurent <simonstl@s...> wrote:
> Frankly, when building data models, I'd much rather have a mix of skill
> levels and perspectives involved.  Different participants have different
> views on the data, but there's often more than just views on the same data
> model - there are often different internalized data models.
>
> Combining those different models with data structures requires more than
> just careful data design.  I'd argue it involves programming,
> transformations at minimum, that ensure that the data presented meets local
> expectations.  That's never easy, but I don't think it's avoidable.
>
> It's been a long time since I've been involved with this in an XML context
> (though I'm starting to work with it in a database context again), so I'm a
> bit cautious about saying this.  Nonetheless, it seems so obviously true to
> me that I might as well.
>

You might consider yourself "retired" but I for one think you are
right on here.  I can't really see why there is much other discussion:
 SME's are going to understand the problem domain,  system designers
and architects are going to have to translate this into a design into
something that meets the logical and physical requirements of the
application.

The real discussion should be about _how_ to do that, but for the most
part that should also be business as usual; interview, map data flows,
model the data domain; abstract / normalize, validate the design with
the SME and other users; iterate again until you have it close enough
for a prototype then do the same thing all over again until your
prototype has grown up into a real application.  The fact that you're
using XML should not change the way turn requirements into an logical
architecture.

-- 
Peter Hunsberger