[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] XML for distributed processing
El Melody Chile writes: > Bosak says (in his paper "XML, Java, and the future of the Web") > that "its utility ultimately lies in the fact that a > computation-intensive process, that would otherwise entail an > enormous, extended resource hit on the server has been changed into > a brief interaction with the server followed by an extended > interaction with the user's own Web client". I can't see how this > is directly due to XML, would the same process not be possible > using a Java applet and data written in *any* industry-specific > representation language? Is there any specific benefit associated > with using XML to implement this language? One advantage is the fact that XML has a concept of both physical (entity) and logical (element) structure. You can put together a document from many different sources anywhere on the Internet (or any other network), and produce an entirely different logical structure for use by your application. For example, here's a document that gets its first chapter from a hypothetical server in Canada, its second, from a server at an American university, and the second paragraph of its third chapter, from a server in Finland (of course, if you're using a Java applet, your web browser must allow applets to make TCP/IP connections to multiple hosts): <?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?> <!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "book.dtd" [ <!ENTITY chap01 SYSTEM "http://xmlserver.nowhere.ca/cgi-bin/get-chap?id=1"> <!ENTITY chap02 SYSTEM "ftp://cow.college.edu/pub/chapters/chapter-02.xml"> <!ENTITY para01 SYSTEM "http://santas.village.fi/text/english/somepara.xml"> ]> <book> <title>My Book</title> <!-- first chapter --> &chap01; <!-- second chapter --> &chap02; <!-- third chapter --> <chapter> <title>This is the third chapter</title> <para>First paragraph.</para> ¶01; <para>Third paragraph.</para> </chapter> </book> Another advantage is the fact that many people are using it. You could invent a different syntax that did the same thing, but why bother, especially when there's already lots of free and commercial software supporting XML. A final advantage is that XML is not language-, software-, or vendor-specific; instead, it's based on an International Standard, ISO 8879, that has been in widespread enterprise use for over a decade. All the best, David -- David Megginson ak117@f... Microstar Software Ltd. dmeggins@m... http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dmeggins/ xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; (un)subscribe xml-dev To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@i... the following message; subscribe xml-dev-digest List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@i...)
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