Root Container Name Best Practice?

I have read that iwov type dcr's are consitered legacy and that new templates should be of type xml. I have been developing the templates this way but want to know if there is any standard that should be followed for naming the root container element. It seems to me that this element should reflect the data record in some way so <record> is too generic. In some cases I have used the name of the "Data Type" as the root node (all lower case with _ separating any words). How does one determine a consistant convention for the root node for xml type dcr's?

TS 6.5 Windows

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kaalraa

I have read that iwov type dcr's are consitered legacy and that new templates should be of type xml. I have been developing the templates this way but want to know if there is any standard that should be followed for naming the root container element. It seems to me that this element should reflect the data record in some way so is too generic. In some cases I have used the name of the "Data Type" as the root node (all lower case with _ separating any words). How does one determine a consistant convention for the root node for xml type dcr's?
TS 6.5 Windows

As per me, better would be to keep the elements and attribute names with in XML as in lower case.

Tim__D

As per me, better would be to keep the elements and attribute names with in XML as in lower case.

I know the rules of xml. What I need is a NAME for the root nodes that makes sense and are in line with any best practices that may exist within this community or iwov recommendations.

kaalraa

I know the rules of xml. What I need is a NAME for the root nodes that makes sense and are in line with any best practices that may exist within this community or iwov recommendations.

IWOV does not recommend any naming convention. However you can still read on w3c practices and conventions for XML. (www.w3.org/XML/)

Tim__D

IWOV does not recommend any naming convention. However you can still read on w3c practices and conventions for XML. (www.w3.org/XML/)

I'm looking to get a sense of what other Teamsite developers do or have done. As TS is brillantly generic I'm really looking to see how other people have interpreted and settled on the available options for their data model. I'm looking to see what others use for the ROOT NODE NAME.

Adam Stoller

I'm looking to get a sense of what other Teamsite developers do or have done. As TS is brillantly generic I'm really looking to see how other people have interpreted and settled on the available options for their data model. I'm looking to see what others use for the ROOT NODE NAME.

I've seen and done it a number of ways - usually depending on my train of thought at the time - but either something generic (so that all processing that needs to access the root node can be kept generic) or category and/or data-type specific (e.g.: HumanResources/AboutUs => hr_about) or something like that.

If you're using code like TeamSite: Smiley Very Happy

CRnode to process the DCRs - I don't believe you need to worry too much about the generic case because I believe it's consumed and simply acted upon as 'rootnode' - but if you're planning to use some 3rd party xpath parsing you may need to consider the pros/cons of using a generically named rootnode vs a data-type specific named rootnode.

Tim__D

Thanks for the response. So, if I'm not using any third party xpath tools then using the data-type name as the root node would be a solid approach? or would using something generic be better? If I used a generic name what would that be ?

Its all a matter of personal preference I realize but thats the reason for my post. To get recommendations and see what everyone else is doing..

Adam Stoller

Thanks for the response. So, if I'm not using any third party xpath tools then using the data-type name as the root node would be a solid approach? or would using something generic be better? If I used a generic name what would that be ?

Its all a matter of personal preference I realize but thats the reason for my post. To get recommendations and see what everyone else is doing..

As stated, if you're going generic - then 'record' or 'content' is as good as anything else (e.g.: 'mumble', and 'foo')

If you're going for distinction - then either the full category and/or data-type (underscores instead of spaces) or a reasonable abbreviation of the same (as shown in my previous post) is a reasonable approach.

Sailesh

I'm looking to get a sense of what other Teamsite developers do or have done. As TS is brillantly generic I'm really looking to see how other people have interpreted and settled on the available options for their data model. I'm looking to see what others use for the ROOT NODE NAME.

I prefer using the datatype name as the root container name, this also helps in identifying which dct type this xml belongs to, just in case we are using the xml standalone somewhere.

Tim__D

I prefer using the datatype name as the root container name, this also helps in identifying which dct type this xml belongs to, just in case we are using the xml standalone somewhere.

Thats what I have started doing. Thanks for the input.