Hi Folks, I am reading a large data specification. It is a well-written specification. It describes each field in the data format. Many fields have co-dependencies: if this field has value A, then that field must have value B. That is a simple co-dependency. Most of the co-dependencies are much more complex. And there are thousands of these complex co-dependencies. Because of all the co-dependencies, the data format quickly became very hard (for me) to understand.
What's been your experience with real world data formats? Has each field been standalone (no co-dependencies) or have many of the fields been dependent on other fields? Do most real-world data formats contain lots of complex co-dependencies? A data format is certainly easier to understand when there were no co-dependencies. But maybe that's just not the way it is in the real world. What has been your experience? /Roger
