CONFERENCE PAPER

Optimising XML for Comparison and Change

This paper discusses different aspects of XML grammar design that should be considered when document comparison is a requirement. Presented at XML London 2013, June 15-16th, 2013.

Thinking of change from the very beginning

Almost every user of XML will, at some stage, need to do some form of comparison between different versions of their XML data or document. This could be because it is necessary to review the changes that have been made, or to check that the output from one version of some software is the same as the previous version.

Designers of XML formats often do not consider this requirement for comparison when designing an XML format. However, if this is taken into account at the design stage then it can make the usefulness of the XML greater and at the same time reduce the cost of developing software.

Read this conference paper to:

  • Understand why using a DTD or schema should be the standard when working with XML documents.
  • Review how best to organise your documents for optimised comparisons from when you start structuring your XML documents.
  • Review the various issues often encountered when comparing documents and how to overcome them.

We consider comparison to be a problem of identifying similarity, aligning information, and then represent the changes so that they can be processed in various ways.

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