[dfdl-wg] How to handle multi-dimensional arrays

[Steve Hanson]

Hi Mike

I will confess to having not given a great deal of thought to multi-dim
arrays in the past, but what you propose looks to be sound.

Regards, Steve

Steve Hanson
WebSphere Business Integration Brokers,
IBM Hursley, England
Internet: smh at uk.ibm.com
Phone (+44)/(0) 1962-815848


                                                                           
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                                       [dfdl-wg] How to handle             
             18/02/2005 21:21          multi-dimensional arrays            
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           





We have come up with an approach to how to represent multi-dimensional
arrays within XSD-described XML. The attached test file (.xml) and DFDL
Schema (.dfdl.xsd) illustrate the proposed solution.

The proposal does not require any changes to XSD, XML or any other special
constructs outside of a single dfdl annotation to specify the storage order
of the representation.

I'm pretty happy with how this works out. We can handle arrays with
different storage orders, like fortran style column-major vs. more common
row-major, and it dovetails nicely with XPath expressions and the XSD data
model. Schema validation can really do something for you, like tell you if
you have all the elements of the array (if it's fixed size), and that you
don't have multiple elements occupying the same array location.

Those interested in multi-dimensional array support please give this some
consideration.

That said, I'm departing on vacation for a week, so I'll toss this out
there for people to look at, but I won't be able to interact with you all
on it until I get back.

...mikeb

 [attachment "test2dArray.xml" deleted by Steve Hanson/UK/IBM] [attachment
"test2dArray.dfdl.xsd" deleted by Steve Hanson/UK/IBM]