The contractor who's setting up a CMS for us that includes MySQL databases populated by the XML feed from our database has given me the following request:

 

feed contains this line

<!DOCTYPE fmresultset PUBLIC "-//FMI//DTD fmresultset//EN" "http://localhost:16020/fmi/xml/fmresultset.dtd">

He has asked me to restructure the feed leaving this line out.

 

Can I do that (in FileMaker Server 13)? Is it a reasonable request?

"feed" as in you send him a file that was exported from FM,  or he makes a direct connection to FMS and this is what FMS sends him?

 

If the latter: no, you would be able to change that unless you write some middleware for  him to connect to and that will "capture" the output that FMS sends,  you clean it up and send it over.

 

Much easier on his side to tackle this I would think.

You placed this in export, but it's really about CWP, isn't it? I know very little about that, but I do know something about XML so I'll take this question:

 

Is it a reasonable request?

 

I don't think so. I should stop here and answer your next question with "let him give his reasons first". But I will provide with you with some background:

 

The DOCTYPE declaration forces the XML parser to validate the XML document against the DTD. This can be a problem if the parsing is attempted off-line. This cannot be the case when the document is consumed directly from a response to HTPP request (I think that's what you mean by "feed"). The DTD is available and the URI to access it is right there in the DOCTYPE declaration.