XML Design Patterns - Patterns Index By Date

This page lists names and abstracts of all XML structural design patterns hosted at this site, listed by date. Click on the names to see the full pattern.

Parameter entities are created to represent different types of values within a DTD.

A single document type with multiple root elements is used to handle varying documents that may exist within a system.

A container element for dealing with unknown elements within the document.

Provide a document type which is defined to be a holder for other, arbitrary XML data.

If document types already exist for the job at hand, they can be reused completely or parts of them can be reused.

Provide a set of attributes that can be placed on all, or most, elements in the document type.

A container has multiple elements as child elements. A new element type is created to group related elements. This is a very general pattern and many other patterns specialize this one.

A concept from domain analysis is made into an element.

To provide flexibility to users of the document, designers can provide an element type that is very generic. The use of the generic element is not well specified by the documents type. This allows for authors to use the document type in ways that may not have been foreseen.

Instead of organizing objects in a hierarchical fashion, objects are organized in a linear way, with signs on each object to indicate its classifications.

Metadata should appear in a document before the data which it is about.

When a system needs to represent a range of different document types, each document type can be represented by a completely separate declarations.

Creating structures that for different elements that are very similar to one another makes DTD easier to use and understand.

Names of elements and attributes should short and understandable by authors and developers of processing software.

Provide a mechanism which allows additional elements to be added into existing content models.

If the same information is included at many different points in a document the information can be placed in just one place, and shared from each place in the document that needs to refer to it.

When there is a large amount of metadata for a document it can make sense to separate this into a different document altogether, with its own document type.

When an area in text needs to refer to a note that will be placed in a different part of the document, a reference is made to a separate entity using an IDREF.

XML technology can be used to represent structured information. This pattern helps determine when XML is an appropriate solution.

Elements which are referenced by another part of a document should be found earlier in the document than the first place they are referenced.

Sometimes the designer of a DTD can not foresee all of the needs that the author of a document will have. In order to give the author flexibility an attribute that specifies a role can be included on some of the elements.

When creating large DTDs, authors are required to learn a large number of attributes and elements, and where they can be positioned in order to know how to use the DTD. By reducing the number of choices that the author has to make at any point in the DTD by group related elements beneath newly introduced elements, the learning requirements of the author can be reduced.

Create a new element whose content model allows only instances of a single element type.

Provide a set of elements which is consistently grouped together as the content models of a number of other elements.

When a large amount of metadata needs to be included in an element the designer may create two children for the element, one for the metadata and one for the body of the document.

When creating large DTDs with many logical units authors might be required to learn a large number of these logical units to know how to use the DTD. By hiding the details of optional parts of the DTD beneath optional elements, some of this complexity can be reduced.

When documents contain content and data about the content, the two types of data should be clearly separated.

Provide a single root element that contains an option of multiple elements. Often used for different transaction types within a single document type.