• From: Jim Melton <jim.melton@o...>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>, "xml-dev@l..." <xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 12:13:40 -0700

Thanks Alain, Simon, and Henry.

One thing that stuck out as I read Henry's message is the word "semi-structured":

XML remains the sweet-spot for semi-structured data

Henry, do you mean that XML's sweet-spot is just with mixed content? Fully-structured XML is not in its sweet spot?

XML with mixed content:

       <Comment>This is a <emp>very</emp> nice widget</Comment>

Fully-structured XML:

       <Book>
             <Title>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</Title>
             <Author>Mark Twain</Author>
             <ISBN>0486280616</ISBN>
       </Book>

Mixed content XML is in. Fully-structured XML is out. Is that what you are saying?

/Roger


-----Original Message-----
From: Henry S. Thompson [mailto:ht@m...]
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2016 12:53 PM
To: Costello, Roger L. <costello@m...>
Cc: xml-dev@l...
Subject: Re: What is XML's sweet spot?

"Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...> writes:

Arjun Ray wrote [2]:

	the authors [of a paper criticizing XML] do go wrong in
	characterizing XML as a "mechanism for serializing structured
	data", which is precisely where all the bad karma originates.

	if the question is "a flexible, efficient, automated mechanism for
	serializing structured data", then just about all of the time XML is
	_not_ the answer.

I strongly disagree.  First, distinguish between human-authored
vs. automatically generated.  Then, distinguish between human-targeted
vs. automatically consumed.  Finally, consider whether
trust boundaries and/or mission-critical integrity constraints are
involved, i.e. whether validation is needed.

For the _very_ large space of automatically-generated and -consumed
information, where validation is required, XML remains the sweet-spot
for semi-structured data, in my opinion.  And there are lots and lots
of systems that do this.

ht

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