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RE: Binary XML

• From: Dylan Walsh <Dylan.Walsh@K...>
• To: PavitraA@r..., xml-dev@l...
• Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 18:12:59 +0100

> From:	PavitraA@r... [SMTP:PavitraA@r...]
> Sent:	Thursday, June 21, 2001 12:52 PM
> 
The following is based on my understanding of the semantics of these
phrases as used in the XML community

>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??

Fundamentally, non-text, non-humanreadable. However the point of it is
to reduce the size of the XML. The WAP standard uses a compressed
version of WML, where the tags are replaced by codes, because the
possible tags are finite and known from the DTD. IIRC it does not
compress the text in elements or attributes. A general compression
system e.g. ZIP works well and compresses the tags and the text.
Conceivably, parsers in the future could read directly from normal or
binary XML, if there were a standard for binary XML.

>II)What is the difference between Binary XML and XML Serialization??

XML serialization is turning, for example, a DOM document (an object
based representation of XML) into into the sequence of characters we all
know as XML syntax. If you like, it is the opposite of parsing. In Java
you could turn the DOM into binary format using Java serialization, as
you can with any object, but that is not the same thing. XML
Serialization is creating XML syntax.

>I am quite confused on this topic why at all it is required ?

XML Serialization is necessary as without it, DOM could not be used to
create XML files. Binary XML is useful where bandwidth/storage is at
premium such in the WAP example.

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