On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 12:35:38PM +0100, Dave Page wrote: > Magnus Hagander wrote: > > Terminology aside, why? The unit is "8.1" not "8" and "1". It makes no > > sense to say you're on version 8, in the given context, so why should the > > XML data pretend there is? > > Because serving the data in the decomposed format gives the consumer the > maximum flexibility to do as they wish with the data. I find it hard to > see why, as a relational database guy, you'd want to offer the data as > "8.1", "8.1.3" etc. when you can just give the three parts separately > and allow people to check whatever they need without having to chop up > strings! > > Imagine wanting to display only the details of the 8.x releases on a > site for example. In your schema, you'd have to use a substring match on > an attribute value to filter out 6.x and 7.x. That is actually precisely my point. It makes *no sense* to filter based on 8.x. 8.0 is no more a major release than 7.4. And we'd encourage people to do that. //Magnus
