Eric van der Vlist
Eric van der Vlist
Eric hiking on the Via Tolosana
| Naissance | |
|---|---|
| Nationalité | French |
| Domaine | Computer Science, Markup Languages, XML |
Eric van der Vlist is a French computer scientist, author, and speaker, specialized in Web technologies and markup languages. He is particularly recognized for his expertise in XML and his contributions to validation schemas, notably RELAX NG and W3C XML Schema.
Biography
Career and Technical Contributions
In the early 2000s, Eric van der Vlist established himself as one of the leading XML experts in Europe. He actively participated in technical debates within the international community, notably through historical mailing lists such as xml-dev (OASIS) and W3C working groups.
He is the founder of Dyomedea, a consulting and training firm specialized in XML technologies. His involvement in the open-source ecosystem and open standards led him to play a pioneering role in promoting alternative and more flexible formats for data structuring.
XML and Schema Expertise
As a leading author, he published technical books with O'Reilly Media. His book XML Schema (2002) is considered one of the founding texts for understanding data modeling with the W3C standard[1]. At the same time, he was a strong advocate for RELAX NG, a competing schema language, to which he also dedicated a specialized book[2].
Projects and Software
Examplotron
Examplotron is an experimental XML schema language designed by Éric van der Vlist in 2001. Its core principle is based on "design by example": rather than writing a complex abstract grammar, the user provides an example XML document that serves as the basis for the schema itself.
The language also allows for the incorporation of business validation rules based on XPath expressions, utilizing the Schematron syntax. Although it remained an experimental project, it influenced discussions on simplifying the Semantic Web and was the subject of derived work within the W3C MicroXML community group.
Eric started coding Examplotron on a train to Prague (Source : Information fournie par le sujet via communication privée, March 2001).
Publications
- XML Schema, O'Reilly Media, 2002 (ISBN 978-0596002527).
- RELAX NG, O'Reilly Media, 2003 (ISBN 978-0596004217).