[thelist] XML Schemas

[Paul Cowan]

Not sure if this is 100% on-topic, but I think it is.

Does anyone know of a good XML DTD for accepting purchase orders over HTTP? 
We want to be able to receive an XML document from other sites, say
something
like:
	<purchaseorder>
		<delivery>
			<address>
				<street>199 Blob Street</street> ...
			</address>
			<items>
				<item id="342342" 
					description="left-handed dongle
bracket" 
					qty="1" />
				...
			</items> 
		</delivery>
	</purchaseorder>

to which we might respond:
	<confirmation estimateddeliverydate="1-Jan-2002"
ordernumber="321231" />

or something... obviously we can create our own DTD for this particular
project, but of course we'd prefer to use an existing standard. Given the
boom XML is going through, you'd think that would be easy, but I have yet to
find a good, simple, flexible standard for something like that. So far, the
best I have found is cXML (www.cxml.org), but I would love to hear from
anyone who has any other suggestions for what we could use.

Because I'm not sure if it's on-topic, I'll give a tip:

<tip type="IIS Performance" author="Paul Cowan">
When upgrading from IIS 4 to IIS 5, be careful with your performance 
settings. Many IIS webmasters can tune an IIS box in their sleep, setting 
the esoteric MaxThreads registry settings with nary a care in the world. 
When you move to IIS 5, it's tempting to tweak the performance of your 
new box in the same way - but be careful. What made IIS 4 faster can 
make IIS 5 considerably slower, as IIS 5 is much more clever with its 
default settings. Before you make a change to thread spawning 
thresholds, memory buffers etc., make sure that you've tested the new 
settings, with your code, on your site, with your servers, to make sure 
they're actually faster, otherwise you'll be shooting yourself in the foot.
</tip>

Cheers,

Paul