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On Friday 04 February 2005 08:50 pm, Elliotte Harold wrote: > Bob Foster wrote: > > A reasonable pov, probably represents the majority, I just don't agree > > with it. A barrier to entry is a barrier to entry. The fact that it's > > hard to write an XML parser means it's hard to understand how to use > > XML, too. > > The bottom line is I don't find any arguments based on the difficulty of > parsing XML to be really compelling, given that we have existence proofs > that correct, efficient parsing of XML is possible. Even in a reduced complexity style of xml such as: <Company Information> Organisation_Name&="Faulty Towers Hotel" Country_Code&="UK" Damage_bill_pw$=4000.40 Insurance_reject_date@=2005-02-21 </Company Information> there can be a lot of complexity. Yes, a uni student could do something simple in a week. But getting systems that use it to be production stable, able to handle commercial amounts of data and provide subsecond response times take a fair degree of skill. Even in one simple element, for example, currencies, Germans and French express theirs with a comma for the decimal. Whilst Americans + Australians and others use a period. so in Germany (after an imaginary currency conversion) we would have: Damage_bill_pwâ?¬=2000,20 Damage_bill_pw$=4000.40 yes, simple enough for a graduate to write a 20 line program for in their local country, but writing a proper parser is truly in the league of the professionals. Then, multiply the number of records by 50000 and demand that your parser runs quickly - and suddenly you find that there aren't that many people out there wanting to do it commercially. and I didn't even get to explaining how much of a hobby job it is not to add in the xpath like support..... and make that run fast enough... but I'm sure people get the picture.... David -- Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win.
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