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re: Doc vs. Data

• To: xml-dev@l...
• Subject: re: Doc vs. Data
• From: Sean McGrath <sean.mcgrath@p...>
• Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 21:31:57 +0100

At 2003-06-06 10:51 -0700, Dare Obasanjo wrote:
>Does anyone have any concrete differences between such uses of XML that 
>require such divisive terms as "doc vs data people".

A dochead is someone who values human readability of markup.

A datahead is someone who thinks human readability is not important because 
XML should be interpreted by machine.

The datahead view is often repugnant to those who value semantic openness 
and interoperability.

The dochead view is often repugnant to those who see the world in terms of 
database, business logic and presentation
layers.

The datahead view is often repugnant to those of a certain age who see all 
the tight coupling it fosters between applications
and data. Tight coupling that will come back to bite you in the form of "$$ 
churn" or "$$ change requests".

The dochead view is - or so docheads like me would argue - the great lesson 
of the Web - View Source. Openness of data - what a great idea! XML is just 
a syntax. Openness is a spirit. Long live the docheads!

:-)
Sean


http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com

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