[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: "Binary XML" proposals
Dear All, It seems to me that a debate "binary format vs textual format" is irrelevant. It is clear that none of them is the perfect format. Both binary and textual have their pros and cons. XML defines a very powerfull and generic framework for managing and processing structured information: very simple APIs (SAX, DOM, etc..), generic query language (XQuery), locators (XPath), transformations (XSL-T). New concepts are emerging like infosets which, among other thing, clarifies the notion of validation and typing, etc.. In certain environment, like broadcast or handheld, CPU, memory and network ressources are very expensive. For instance, in the multimedia indexing domain, there are applications which need very large structured AV metadata stream (might become as large as a video stream) with very strong constraints in terms of compression, filtering and streaming. A textual format would in these cases be a terrible burden. However, it would be very damageable to forbid interoperability with XML environments. Therefore, binary formats will continue to exist. The new challenge is not to replace one format or the other, but to make them as compatible as possible. It should be very easy to switch from one format to an other. The effort spend to design an XML language should be reused for the binary format. Finally, a "text-designed application" should be easily adapted to deal with a binary format. When designing MPEG-7, the following policies have been adopted: - to stay as close as possible to the XML spirit by the adoption of a textual version designed with XML Schema, - to define a binary format that uses XML Schema definition to generate an efficient encoding scheme, - to allow one to decide whether he wants to use binary or textual format. Since the beginning, MPEG-7 has been XML driven. The MPEG-7 community is very reluctant to follow another development path. However in MPEG-7 everybody recognizes the need for a binary format. Best regards, Claude. -- ______________________________________________ Claude Seyrat Expway c/o Acland 18 avenue Georges V 75008 Paris tel: 33 1 56 62 11 05 fax: 33 1 56 62 11 11 mail: claude.seyrat@e...
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