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RE: XML Binary and Compression

• To: elharo@m..., xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: XML Binary and Compression
• From: winkowski@m...
• Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 09:24:30 -0500
• Cc: winkowski@m..., msc@m...

Do you regard office file formats as binary? To me they are application
specific file formats. Even so, is your comparison of these file formats
with XML a lossy comparison? That is does the XML version include all the
application specific information needed to recreate the application file or
is it limited strictly to the data content? 

- Dan 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elliotte Rusty Harold [mailto:elharo@m...]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 9:55 AM
> To: winkowski@m...; msc@m...; xml-dev@l...
> Cc: winkowski@m...; msc@m...
> Subject: RE:  XML Binary and Compression
> 
> 
> At 11:54 PM -0500 3/10/03, winkowski@m... wrote:
> >The military has been building binary messages optimized for 
> size efficiency
> >for decades. Our group has been working over the past 
> several years to
> >express a variety of messages, some based on binary 
> specifications and some
> >delimitated ASCCI, in XML. In all cases the XML version of 
> these messages
> >are larger than the original binary or ASCII. Is this 
> surprising? I don't
> >think so - metadata is not transmitted in either binary or 
> delimitated ASCII
> >formats. You state that the fact that binary files are 
> smaller than the
> >equivalent XML is decidedly untrue based on your experience. 
> Quite frankly
> >this surprises me. Our own experience is just the opposite.
> 
> Very possibly then we're working in different environments with 
> different kinds of data. I routinely work in the desktop space and 
> occasionally work in the desktop space and occasionally on the 
> server. Some developers who work with embedded systems have pointed 
> out to me that my experience colors my perceptions, as theirs colors 
> theirs.
> 
> I suspect you're working with very different software and file 
> formats than I am. For instance, based on what you report I 
> hypothesize that you're not working with relational databases or 
> office documents like spreadsheets and word processor files, or you 
> could hardly have avoided noticing that XML is more efficient in 
> practice than binary formats. But I don't know what you are working 
> with, and I don't know in which environments your results are 
> relevant.
> -- 
> 
> +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
> | Elliotte Rusty Harold | elharo@m... | Writer/Programmer |
> +-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+
> |           Processing XML with Java (Addison-Wesley, 2002)          |
> |              http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava             |
> | http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0201771861/cafeaulaitA  |
> +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
> |  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      |
> |  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.cafeconleche.org/    |
> +----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
> 

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