I am in the process of defining a protocol that my company will use to communicate with its customers. At the moment I'm scratching my head about one issue. Should I use type-specific elements to describe our entities e.g. <blah> <floorp>sloop</floorp> <gloorp>droop</gloorp> </blah>
or have a generic element with a type attribute e.g.
<datawad type="blah">
<datawad type="floorp">sloop</datawad>
<datawad type="gloorp">droop</datawad>
</datawad>
I can guess that the former would be easier to develop initially as it would we more conducive to schema generators (e.g. web service tools like Java2WSDL, etc.) but since it is tied to types change manangement might be more difficult than in the latter case. Anyhoo any insight or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, D.
or have a generic element with a type attribute e.g.
<datawad type="blah">
<datawad type="floorp">sloop</datawad>
<datawad type="gloorp">droop</datawad>
</datawad>
I can guess that the former would be easier to develop initially as it would we more conducive to schema generators (e.g. web service tools like Java2WSDL, etc.) but since it is tied to types change manangement might be more difficult than in the latter case. Anyhoo any insight or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, D.