Reusability in SGML with Focus on Software Engineering: SGML Architecture and Code Reuse

Associated with the concept of architecture is the notion of an architecture engine, a software component working closely with the SGML parser:

it validates the parsed instance relative to the linked architectural forms by interpreting the architecture renaming attribute (e.g. HyTime, HyNames, ...);
it produces its output relative to the architecture meta-DTD.

While the first item is most important for formal specification of semantics, the second item is equally important from the point of view of code reuse. Indeed, if you process the output of the architecture engine, your application becomes markup-independent, as element and attribute names are reported to your application as if they came from instance of the meta-DTD.

If an application is written to an architecture, the programmer can concentrate on the semantics of the parsed data, being confident that his program will be reusable for compatible DTDs expressing the same semantics.

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