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RE: SV: XML=WAP? And DOA?

• To: 'Mark Seaborne' <MSeaborne@o...>, "'xml-dev@l...'" <xml-dev@l...>
• Subject: RE: SV: XML=WAP? And DOA?
• From: Nicolas LEHUEN <nicolas.lehuen@u...>
• Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 21:15:23 +0100

Mark Seaborne wrote :
>> > >2. XML in itself is no more advanced than CSV.
>> > 
>> > I still disagree on that; hierarchical self-describing markup 
>> > IS a definite advance over CSV.
>> 
>> This is one of the hypes about XML, that I'd like to defuse. 
>> XML is not any more self-describing than CSV files. E.g.
>> 
>> <99874987kjhk>
>> 	<gnygngyasdada>
>> 		What is this?
>> 	</gnygngyasdada>
>> </99874987kjhk>
>> 
>> Case proved?
>
>No. I know from your snippet that <gnygngyasdada> is child of
><99874987kjhk>, and that it contains some character data. I 
>don't know what
>it means, but I can write some code to parse it, so that 
>someone who does
>know what it means can at least look at it.
>
>Big advance on
>
>99874987kjhk,gnygngyasdada,What is this?
>
>or, more likely
>
>What is this?,What is that?,What are those?
>
>With a comma delimited (in its most generic sense) structure I 
>don't know
>what is data, what is tag (if any), what relationship fields 
>have with each
>other, or even what constitutes a record (I have had to write 
>code to handle
>1 record per line and multiple, fixed or variable lines per record).
>
>All the best
>
>Mark

I am sorry but obtaining information about relationships is of little use if
you don't have the corresponding semantics. It is useful for lexical-level
tools, granted, so that you can pretty-print the document, or check
well-formedness, but that's all.

That's why we are saying that XML is no so advanced compared to CSV. Okay,
XML can represent labeled trees, and CSV cannot. But it is not a
"self-described structure", or if you call that a self-described structure,
you have to reckon at CSV is a self-described structure too. XML adds the
hierarchical dimension to CSV, but does not add anything to the meaning of
data.

Regards,
Nicolas

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