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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Microsoft FUD on binary XML...
 Joshua Allen wrote: > Are you arguing that the world before XML was "just fine"? Of course not! Before XML, on the Internet, every time someone created a new protocol or new product, they also created a new on-the-wire encoding format, often a new schema language (or a reinterpretation of something like ABNF), and often a new file format. It was insane! In fact, it is just this insanity and confusion that motivated folk working on OSI, mail systems (X.400) and directory services (X.500)back in the 80's to define ASN.1. ASN.1 did for us then, in that restricted realm, exactly what XML is now, finally, doing for the Internet and the rest of the world. As far as I can see, there are virtually no differences between the XML approach and the ASN.1 approach other than the fact that one is human readable and the other requires transformation before being human readable. Other than being directly readable by humans, virtually every other "benefit" attributed to XML is something that can be said equally of ASN.1. For a long time, XML didn't have schemas, but even that is fixed now. (Now there are many XML schema languages -- including ASN.1). The truth of the matter is that when this SGML vs ASN.1 conflict began about 20 years ago, the two sides should have gotten together and said: "Let's define SGML encoding rules for ASN.1 to go along with BER." That would have given us all 20 years of consistent, standard, inter-operable data exchange. It is not too late to finally make the compromise today. Let the binary folk have binary and let the text folk have XML -- as long as the two encodings are completely interchangeable and based on standards. > by arguing that XML-text has no special interop characteristics > that distinguish it beyond others. If you feel that way, and > if you feel that ASN.1 is "just fine" for loosely-coupled > interop, then what are you doing wasting your time on XML-DEV? XML is massively better than many of the other text-based interchange formats that have been proposed. I much prefer it to say: RFC822 name value pairs or the X12 EDI stuff. If you're doing human-readable text encoding, XML is great. It's easy to program for, easy to teach people, etc. It's even a great "value notation" for use in ASN.1 schemas! But, it [expletive deleted] for many applications that require binary data. I have never argued that XML isn't valuable or that ASN.1 defined encodings are better in all cases. What I will argue is that sometimes XML is the best choice and other times one of the ASN.1 binary encodings is the best choice. We need *both* XML and the ASN.1 defined encodings. If we have both, then we can eliminate virtually all arguments for defining *any* new encodings. At that point, we'd be where we should be. At that point EVERYONE would be using well understood, standardized encodings for interchange -- not just the folk who can live with XML's slow to parse, fat but wonderfully easy to read and process encodings. (Note: Before you say XML is fast enough or compact enough for *you*, remember that there are folk with tighter requirements than yours...) I want ASN.1 defined encodings to be accepted for all the same reasons that XML people seem to fight this idea. (i.e. to increase ease-of-use and inter-operability) And, I want ASN.1 defined encodings to be accepted since I think that is the best thing for the movement towards integration and interoperability that XML has been key to enabling. I view my arguments as being "good for XML," not as an argument against XML. I hope that is clear. ASN.1 encodings are not and never will be "replacements" for XML. We will always have use for XML just as we will always have people that need binary encodings. But, rather than fighting, these two groups should be working together. Let's kill this decades old perma-thread by cooperating. bob wyman 
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