Rachel Foerster wrote:
>
> I beg to differ with your opinion about what constitutes a proprietary
> schema vs a "standard". In the world of standards, the label standard is
> typically reserved for those that have been approved by a recognized
> standards development organization, most often accredited or sanctioned by
> one of several organizations, such as ANSI, ISO, UN/CEFACT, and
> so on. This
> would also include the IETF RFC's.
By this argument, however, XML itself is not a standard so the whole
argument is moot. On the other hand when standards bodies such as HL7 and
ASTM submit healthcare standards which employ XML, these are indeed
standards. So the fact that XML is not a true standard may be irrelevent for
several reasons.
SGML is an ISO standard. SGML has associated standards including HyTime and
DSSSL which define the ISO Property Sets and Groves. It is the general
feeling that such stanards are capable of supporting 'strong datatyping'
(whatever that means because this is all ultimately text in any case).
Furthermore there are many IETF RFCs, ISO and ANSI standards etc. etc.
which can provide well defined datatypes for use in XML documents. There is
nothing preventing an HL7 standard, or the HIPPA transaction set, for
example, from going well beyond the limits defined in DTDs to specify the
format of text nodes within elements or attribute values. Such a
specification could become an ANSI (or ISO for that matter) standard. In
fact, HL7 or ASTM would be free to adopt the current XML Schema document ...
if it chose to ... or to develop its own XML schema format ... if it chose
to ...
For example: we currently have DTD schemas which are a subset of SGML DTDs,
the W3C is developing XML Schemas, and has developed RDF Schemas but there
are also independent schema types: "Schematron" and "Relax" both of which
have followings. So really XML *currently* has a rich *set* of schemas.
>
> Using your argument, then one could say that an XML syntax developed or
> defined by Microsoft, for example, that was NOT an approved W3C
> Recommendation, which XML V1.0 is, would also be a standard in your mind.
If we consider both X12 EDI and SGML, both true standards by any accepted
definition. Both technologies 'work' but fall short of truly widespread
adoption. The bottom line is that we need technologies that are adopted on a
widespread basis, and are usable. Open source software is an enabler for
both, hence what we are doing.
Jonathan Borden
The Open Healthcare Group
http://www.openhealth.org
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