Hey folks,
I'm looking to chop XMLObjects out of the system and replace them with a much simpler custom message mechanism under XML-RPC. There are a number of reasons for this.
1. The current XMLObject code is something like 6000 lines which is way overkill for what little they accomplish.
2. They were completely broken in the 1.0 release so nobody is using them.
3. User defined XML-RPC messages will have much easier calling semantics and will be implemented in the server is maybe 100 lines of code. They accomplish the exact same thing without all the fat and any existing (if any exist) XMLObjects will be trivial to convert. This isn't a strategic direction, but I don't believe we're mature enough to know where we should go for this and I see XMLObjects being even worse.
4. They're difficult and inflexible to configure.
5. The emdedded version of Xindice will have absolutely no use for XMLObjects.
6. It removes an unnecessary concept from the documentation of the software. There's nothing at all special about XMLObjects, they're just java classes and I'd much prefer to not have to explain this concept anymore.
7. This project is completely stalled and I want to trim the server down to a bare core so that we can more easily focus on features that people really want. I've seen very few firm requests for XMLObject functionality.
8. I don't want to implement the creation/management and calling functions for them in the new APIs.
I know the plan was to use them for triggers, but at the rate we're moving we'll get around to that in about ten years and I'd really rather just chuck the code and rethink that approach anyway.
BTW, I'm trying to finally clean things up to put out a much needed 1.1 release.
Kimbro Staken Java and XML Software, Consulting and Writing http://www.xmldatabases.org/ Apache Xindice native XML database http://xml.apache.org/xindice XML:DB Initiative http://www.xmldb.org
