Lets say the DTD does cover...

[mountainbiker]

Lets say you and your fellow companies have agreed on a common DTD (maybe one day in the future a scheme). Unfortunately, the DTD doesn't cover some important elements. Some of these missing elements are of interest to all the companies in the pack, and some missing elements are only of interest to my company.

The elements of interest to all could be "shoe horned" into an existing element (before the companies all come to a common agreement). The company-specific elements in some cases would be nice to keep with the xml document through out its life. In other case, the elements are just needed for internal document management, but are not desirable in document exchange with the other companies.

What would be good ways to address this scenario?

 

[flumpy]

Try to make all parties aware of the importance of these inclusions. Talk money, it often jolts managers and partners into alertness.

Break everything down in terms of costs in the future, and that they could increase significantly if these details are skimped upon today. Lay out a scenario for this happening, the cost of altering systems dependant upon these simple elements compared to the cost of adding them in now, and they'll soon change there minds


matt

 

[mountainbiker]

Thank you flumpy. Yes in a perfect world you would have a perfect solution Unfortunately, the groups I work with are very large, very spead out, and very imperfect--and money rarely matters. In fact, I am surprised we are even to the stage where we are.

Some groups have developed there own DTD and transform to the overall group's DTD when doing interchange. We were thinking of conforming to the group's DTD, but (1) adding an inline DTD to our instances and/or (2) pushing some things into the group's DTD where some element's usage is vaguely described in the data element dictionary.