Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
So, Google has decided to "share" their "replacement" for XML:
It's not a replacement for XML. It's a replacement for ASN.1, or misused
XML.
If you're using XML and you don't have tags inside your CDATA, you're
misusing XML and you should be using something else. It's a "markup
language" people. If it doesn't make sense when you replace everything
from < to > with a space, then it shouldn't be XML.
Now, I'm no fan of XML. I loathe XML. XML is only "self-describing" in
the sense that I can read it by hand and generally puzzle out how to
write something to munge it.
On the other hand, I have a system which downloads a catalog that looks like
<row><Col1>some data</Col1><Col2>Some more
data</Col2>...<Col37>Data</Col37></row>
It's only self-describing if you actually write meaningful names there.
Oh, and Col7 means different things depending on the text in Col2.
You know what? I doubt it. I've seen NIH before, and this *stinks* of
NIH.
Yeah. On the other hand, so what?
My concern isn't that google invented another way of doing the same
thing that's been done over and over. My concern is that because it's
google, everyone and their uncle will use and extend it without really
thinking about it.
Sort of like HTTP. And HTML.
This is, IMO, the *SINGLE* advantage that XML brings to the part.
Well, that and that it's a markup language. But repeating the IDL in
every record doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
"We don't feel like taking the time to understand *why* all those other
people did complicated stuff in functional, portable, debugged
libraries. And, we're geniuses, so we'll roll our own. Because writing
your own code is more fun than understanding someone else's. Oh, and
our stuff will have lots of bugs, get nice and complicated as we either
add those other features or develop horrible hacks to work around the
limitations."
See HTTP. See HTML. See OpenVPN. See any number of other popular
internet protocols.
The worst part of this is that there are 10 gazillion programmers going
"Oh, if Google uses it, it must be the thing to use.".
That's my main concern, yes.
Doug LaRue wrote:
> XML makes maintaining the code far far easier because adding a data
> element to the structure for company X will not break company Y or Z
> software.
Except that a huge number of existing IDL systems (including all the
standard ones) have this as a goal too. It's not like the people who
stripped SGML down to XML were the first people to think "hey, maybe we
should make upgrades of data easier." Heck, even FTP error codes are
designed to be extensible.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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