Using XML with Legacy Business Applications

Code Lists

Codes aren't used in real life as much as identifiers, but they abound in business applications. There is always some debate about what constitutes a code versus what constitutes an identifier, and more confusion is created when people talk about coded identifiers! However, we can put a stake in the ground at least a bit by talking about country codes, which use short, coded values in place of longer, less constrained values that are harder to validate. For example, we use “US” instead of “United States of America” and “FR” instead of “France.” Country codes are especially useful since country names may be spelled differently in different languages. Other very common code lists are for state or province codes and units of measure. ...