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Re: Remembering the original XML vision

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: Re: Remembering the original XML vision
• From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@p...>
• Date: Sat, 15 Feb 2003 14:33:51 +0000
• In-reply-to: <5.2.0.9.0.20030215082258.03f498d8@n...>
• References: <5.1.0.14.0.20030213121839.03083488@m...>

At 08:30 15/02/2003 -0500, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>At 12:25 PM 2/13/2003 +0000, Sean McGrath wrote:
>>This makes perfect sense in an object world view but is a source of 
>>dispair for those
>>of us who see XML as a markup language not an object serialisation notation.
>
>Now that we are celebrating the fifth anniversary of XML [1], it may be 
>time to re-read one of the seminal papers on XML, " [2].
>
>XML was always supposed to work well both for structured documents and 
>serializing structured data from various sources. Any view of XML that 
>doesn't allow for both, and despairs that other people may be using XML 
>differently than you are, misses the original vision.

There is abundant evidence in the archives of this list that the document 
folk don't mind XML being used for data/objects. I'm one of them.

What doc-heads object to is the peripheralisation of *documents* so starkly 
evidenced by the brutish intraveneous injection of
"data speak" into the core of the XML 'stack' from certain quarters.

It did not have to go into the core, did not have to be so invasive. Its 
really, really sad that it was allowed to, thus tilting the whole balance 
of the XML "vision" violently in one direction. A direction perhaps best 
addressed by revisiting ASN.1 or Corba or something - not botching XML.

Phrases like "XMLBeans" just make things worse. Such phases help spread the 
meme  that data/object serilisation *is* XML, that RPC calls *are* XML, not 
that they are both merely facets of a much richer vista of electronic 
information representation possibilities.

Sean

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: Re: Remembering the original XML vision
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• References:
  • Re: New tool for handling XML in Java
    • From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@p...>
  • Remembering the original XML vision
    • From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@d...>

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