Using XML with Legacy Business Applications

General Document Design Decisions

In Chapter 4 we discussed various issues regarding the design of XML documents that are independent of their schema representation. Here are a few of them again, from the perspective of designing your own documents.

• Naming conventions: The most pragmatic advice I can give you is to use names that will be familiar to users of your application. If a field is called Purchase Order Number on the screen or a printed report, don't give it an Element name of CustomerOrderIdentifier. Issues such as use of upper and lower case, abbreviations, and word separators are matters of style. Choose one you like, then stick to it once you've chosen.

• Elements and Attributes: This one again is kind of a religious issue. If you ...