[Uml-devel] Validation of XMI files, DTD or schema?

[Andrew Sutton]

On Tuesday 28 January 2003 3:03 pm, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Brian Thomas wrote:
> > 	Hi, I just tried to validate the output XMI from umbrello with a number
> > of available XMI dtd, none of them worked (some errors printing below).
> > Particularly troublesome was the fact that the umbrello files are
> > outputing something with attributes of xmi.version "1.2" and "1.3"
> > (different nodes have different versions). This seems inconsistent, AND,
> > for no DTD I could find is there any xmi.version attribute higher than
> > 1.1.
> >
> > 	Can someone point me to a DTD (or schema) which will work?
>
> There isn't one.  XMI is a difficult standard to follow and we don't do it
> very well.  I'd be curious to know how well Rational or Together or the
> like do it.
>
> The latest version of XMI is 1.2 I think but it's DTD does seem to say
> version 1.1 which is strange, but probably our bug.
>
> The 1.3 is the version of UML.  It could be upped to 1.4 if you wish.
>
> There are probably numberous places where the file format could be updated
> to be more XMI compliant which would be great (so long as we retained the
> possibility to load Umbrello 1.1 files).

actually, i think there is - sort of. you can find it here:

http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?formal/01-04-03

its more or less specific to uml - which isn't an entirely accurate portrait 
of pure XMI - which is pretty much metamodel independent. the DTD's for 
metamodels can be generated from the MOF specifications of those metamodels - 
like UML.

even with 100% compliance to the XMI and UML standards, we won't be compliant 
in a couple of situations. i'm thinking of cases where we're storing 
application settings in the file. i don't think you'd ever be able to truly 
validate an XMI file based on the XMI, MOF or UML DTD's.

andy