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RE: Hostility to "binary XML" (was Re: XML 2004 webl

• To: "'Robin Berjon'" <robin.berjon@e...>, Michael Champion <michaelc.champion@g...>
• Subject: RE: Hostility to "binary XML" (was Re: XML 2004 weblog items?)
• From: "DuCharme, Bob (LNG-CHO)" <bob.ducharme@l...>
• Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 15:48:50 -0500
• Cc: xml-dev@l...

Robin Berjon wrote:

>Michael Champion wrote:
>> The 'binary XML' stuff got a lot less hostile reception than I 
>> expected.  Is the world ready to hear that XML 1.x text serialization 
>> is not suitable for wireless applications, is this old news, or what?

>during a recent presentation I tried to outrage the audience with 
>some over-the-top pro-binary XML positions (expecting to use the 
>push-back to moderate them)

And in Mike's talk, he did not do this. He put everything I had heard in
context, including counter-arguments to the various arguments, so there was
little reason to get hostile. For example, there was his point (whether his
own or quoting of other people) that just because XML doesn't suit a
particular class of applications well doesn't necessarily mean that XML
should be twisted inside out to accommodate that class of apps; perhaps it
means that that class of apps should look elsewhere for its needs. 

His answer to my question at the end convinced me to maintain my current
level of skepticism: apparently all of the talk of alternative XML encodings
being much more efficient than text XML are based on consistent use of
document classes for each test, so this consistency means the kind of
redundancy that makes compression much easier. 

When someone prototypes an encoding that is orders of magnitude more
efficient for arbitrary XML, which Mike said that no one had done yet, I'll
more seriously consider the possibility that a binary XML standard might be
worth the trouble.

(Mike, please correct me if I misremember. And it was nice to finally meet
you!)

Bob DuCharme   www.snee.com/bob       <bob@  
snee.com> weblog on linking-related topics: 
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/1191

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