Animal node brand image question.

[nephiharvey]

As we look at the current xsd, a brand inspection is per animal, which is practical if each animal has a different brand, and sometimes, rarely this might be the case. But for the case where the brand is the same on all animals within a group, would it be practical to also have the brand located on an "Animals" node that is a parent node to all the individual animals. We might be able to do this with other elements that are the same too. The practical concern is if 1000 animals are on a CVI and each has the same brand, the way that it currently is that the base64 representation of the brand is against each animal, making a overly bloated file. IF we move it into the Animals above the individual level as an option, it would only be necessary to send the brand once, making the files much more compact.

[mmcgrath]

I wonder if we can use the ID/IDREF technique again? This would solve the problem you've identified but I don't know if it is possible to have two separate ID/IDREF pairs in a single schema -- @mkm1879 do you know if this is possible?

Alternatively, we could house the brands in a registry and then refer to them by a reference number in the Animal element --- this was how I had implemented Accessions before moving to the ID/IDREF approach....

[mkm1879]

I think this reply may be late but...
Yes, you can have multiple ID/IDREF pairs, but I don't know of a way to say that the IDREF has to refer only to ID in the correct place. So an image could include the ID of an Accession and the schema validator wouldn't catch it. (I could well be wrong on this point. I'm really barely an intermediate level XML geek.) But a home-made reference isn't enforced by the schema either so it would really be a wash.

That said, if we are going to support signature images, I'd just include it in place.

(I hate the idea of including the signature image, by the way. I don't see that it adds any value at the traceability level and it definitely adds no non-repudiation value on the legal document end. But as long as this is optional, it isn't an issue I'm going to fight.)