[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Binary XML
Quoting PavitraA@r...: Heheh, here goes :-) > Dear All, > > I am new to xml so keeping that in mind can you please put osome light > on > > I) What Binary XML really mean?? > 1)Is it compiled form of XML into Byte code OR > 2)Is it compressing XML using some algorithms OR > 3)Is it something else?? Binary XML does not refer to any fixed, defined, standard right now, no more than "christianity" or "good food" does. It's a concept, that the XML Infoset or a simple DOM model (thus not requiring schema type information) can be stored in a format designed with differing constraints to "normal" textual XML - generally one or more from the feature set "Small file size", "Fast to parse and generate", or "Possible to run XPath expressions across and even update without needing to slurp the whole thing into memory". Why is this being discussed? Well, some people want a way of using the XML data model without incurring the costs of textual XML encoding, since being able to read the data with a text editor instead of a special editor is necessary. Why is this sometimes violently opposed? Because many people feel that human readability without a special editor is crucial to data communications in the modern heterogenous Internet, and that the costs in size and parser complexity are negligble compared to the benefits of programmers being able to mock up test data in Notepad. And because at least one proponent of a binary XML format (me!) is incapable of objecting to an argument without seeming like he's deliberately trying to be obnoxious :-) > II)What is the difference between Binary XML and XML Serialization?? I'm not sure. XML serialisation may refer to binary XML as I have defined it above - serialising a DOM tree in a binary format - or it may refer to a programming language interface like Java serialisation that uses XML as the actual underlying format. > I am quite confused on this topic why at all it is required ? I suspect that the many answers to this could cause a flame war :-) ............................................................................ If the idea interests you, I have created a low-volume mailing lists where the various binary XML efforts post occasional status reports and discuss issues: http://lists.warhead.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/xml-bin There are efforts to define a simple binary representation of a series of SAX events, efforts to encode DOM trees for read and in-place update with indexing to support fast XPath (basically a portable XML database format), and efforts to take an XML schema and use it to generate a compact, fast, encoding format that requires the same schema at the other end to decode, the advantage being that you don't need to transport weighty element and attribute names over the wire, and it can encode a number as a native number rather than as a series of decimal digits. The latter approach is being taken by the ISO, defining a means for XML Schemas to be automatically translated into ASN.1 abstract types, and an XML encoding for ASN.1 information. ASN.1 is a type notation like XML Schema, but not tied to any particular encoding; various encodings for it are available, and XML is being added to this list. ABS -- Alaric B. Snell http://www.alaric-snell.com/ http://RFC.net/ http://www.warhead.org.uk/ Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software
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