Date: 2004-08-01T14:02:59
Editor: AchimHuegen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Wiki: Jakarta HiveMind Wiki
Page: NotXMLProposal
URL: http://wiki.apache.org/jakarta-hivemind/NotXMLProposal
no comment
Change Log:
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@@ -326,3 +326,28 @@
SteveGibson: For us, we use a lot of XML already, so being able to keep XML
for me is very important. A lot of people are saying they don't want to invent
a new language - SDL. Well, to me, this looks a lot like IBMs Stanza format,
used in AIX forever, and also the configuration format a company I used to work
for came up with - purely because you specify the object you want to create and
assign the properties. I think the SDL is very readable, and would probably use
it if we didn't already use lots of XML files and *gasp* properties files.
NareshSikha: I hope that the bulk of Hivemind Services and Configurations are
written by junior developers who are more concerned about their resume than the
strength of the architecture they are fulfilling. This will afford more time
for architects and leads to solve the interesting problems. Therefore I think
'''tools''' should be delivered to help developers author valid module
definitions (Eclipse plugins are a good starting point). Then the details of
the definition are more or less irrelevant. Barring that, please, please, give
junior developers a chance to strengthen their resume by allowing for industry
standard means for communicating metadata (XML).
+
+AchimHuegen: Now that I worked with SDL I would like to share my opinion: I
don't think the benefit of SDL is big enough to counter-balance the
disadvantages.
+The main differences to XML are the use of curly braces instead of start and
end tags and the way of quoting. The use of braces enhances readability on the
one hand but reduces it on the other hand for larger files. Apparently the
verbose xml format is sometimes even helpful. I couldn't resist to quote the
main hivemodule.sdl, sorry howard ;-) :
+{{{ } // element construct
+ } // parameters-schema
+}}}
+
+Use of quotation marks is simply inverted, which could be a bit confusing:
+{{{
+XML:
+<bean name="bean2">
+ <string>testValue2</string>
+</bean>
+
+SDL:
+bean (name=bean2)
+{
+ string { "testValue2" }
+}
+}}}
+
+The differences are subtle but must be learned by developers. Furthermore,
there are still some open questions like encoding (character sets).
+I think, the main problem behind "too much xml" is not the xml format itself,
but the definition of verbose schemes and the shifting of programming logic to
xml files. The definition of proprietary formats by each library is no solution
for these problems.
+
+
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