Arguments for and against storing data in attributes

[Falcolas]

I personally feel that it's a bad idea. I've got to convince
managerial types of this.

Would some of you mind posting comments for and against the concept of
storing data in XML attributes? If you've got nothing good to say for
it, I'm OK with that too.

Thanks ahead of time for your input.

~G

[roy axenov]

Falcolas wrote:

[storing data in attributes]

I personally feel that it's a bad idea. I've got to
convince managerial types of this.

Would some of you mind posting comments for and against
the concept of storing data in XML attributes? If you've
got nothing good to say for it, I'm OK with that too.

Storing data in attributes is perfectly fine, as long as
it's plain old data, and as long as you keep in mind that
attribute value normalization applies (the standard uses
MUST there, so you can't work around that in a sensible
way).

--
roy axenov

If only we smelled each other's asses, there wouldn't be any
war.--Dustin Hoffman

[Joe Kesselman]

Falcolas wrote:

I personally feel that it's a bad idea.

There are sometimes reasons not to do it, eg if you expect the data may
need to support sub-structure later on. But it isn't automatically a bad
idea, especially if the purpose of the data is to help describe the role
the element is playing (which is the classic use for attributes).

Tools for tasks.
--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry

[Peter Flynn]

Falcolas wrote:

I personally feel that it's a bad idea. I've got to convince
managerial types of this.

Would some of you mind posting comments for and against the concept of
storing data in XML attributes? If you've got nothing good to say for
it, I'm OK with that too.

See the FAQ at http://xml.silmaril.ie/developers/attributes/

///Peter

[Falcolas]

On Jul 20, 10:03 pm, Joe Kesselman <keshlam-nos...@comcast. netwrote:

There are sometimes reasons not to do it, eg if you expect the data may
need to support sub-structure later on. But it isn't automatically a bad
idea, especially if the purpose of the data is to help describe the role
the element is playing (which is the classic use for attributes).

Thank you for all your responses, and for the faq link. Some good
reading.

To clarify for the above comment, *all* the data is being stored in
attributes; the leaf elements contain no data themselves, just
attributes. I'm in full agreement that metadata belongs in attributes.
I'm just of the opinion that barring a remotely good reason (which we
have not received), data should be stored in elements.

~G