RE: XML based Manifests vs Multi-part-related MIME encoding of mu lti-part messages

[David Burdett <david.burdett@commerceone.com>]

Matthew/Kit et al

Matthew says 

>>>XML Parser's can't stop in the middle of a document? <<<

I agree.

But if we said instead "**Current** XML Parser's can't stop in the middle of
a document?" then their might be solution. Suppose there was a new type of
XML parser that you could ask to just extract particular well formed
sub-trees and ignore the rest, then wouldn't we have a solution to the
problem as we could extract the header and leave the body unparsed (even if
it had errors).

The only problem is that you need to know **in advance** that you have an
ebXML message, but we could do this at the transport or mime level, e.g.:
1. With a new MIME type: text/ebXML
2. With a transport parameter such as: message-type: ebXML

Thoughts?

David


-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew MacKenzie [mailto:matt@xmlglobal.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2000 5:46 PM
To: David Burdett; Dick Brooks (E); Ravi Manikundalam; ebXML Transport
(E-mail); rnif_v2@lists.rosettanet.org
Subject: RE: XML based Manifests vs Multi-part-related MIME encoding of
mu lti-part messages



>
>Email by Kit Leuder ...
>
><Kit>
>Benefits of MIME envelope:
>  - If you are using e-mail, it falls out automatically.
>  - If you want to parse the header but don't want to parse the body
>(content), XML parsers aren't able to arbitrarily stop in the middle of
>a document. (e.g., if you have an ebXML envelope around a huge document
>content and don't want the overhead of parsing the whole thing.) MIME
>allows the header to be a separate attachment from the body, so they can
>be parsed separately.

XML Parser's can't stop in the middle of a document?  If it is event based, 
it can.  I stop dead in the middle of a parse quite often using expat, I am 
sure a SAX parser would allow this is well.  You just kill the parser 
object when you have seen what you want to see.

Cheers,

Matthew MacKenzie
XML Global Technologies, Inc.