[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Microsoft FUD on binary XML...
Dennis Sosnoski wrote: > When dealing with the outside world many applications > want to use XML for all the standard reasons. In reality, > though, it's only the Infoset that they care about. The contention that "only the Infoset" really matters is one of the key sources of conflict between the two sides of the "binary vs text" debate. Supporters of binary encodings generally consider the primacy of the Infoset to be intuitively obvious. Those opposed to binary often argue that encoding is more important. This is, of course, downright baffling for the binary folk. Clearly, it isn't quite so intuitive or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Personally, I'm in the group that likes to view the world via the Infoset. I want my code to deal with abstract concepts that are as close as possible to my conceptual view of the application and as far as reasonable from the dirty details of how the machine will actually process things. I want highly efficient ways for expressing my "intent" which minimize the amount of effort that I must put into even understanding mechanisms like encoding rules. As a result, I like to stay "encoding-neutral." My code presents an abstract object to an interface which then serializes the thing in what I hope will be a compact and efficient manner. I really don't want to know how the bits actually look while on the disk (unless I've got some debugging to do.) My goal is to separate "interface" from "implementation." I want an InfoSet "interface" in memory (where my program sits) and really wish that I did't need to know what the encoding rules are. I would appreciate it very much if at least one of the folk that sees syntax as being more important than the Infoset interface could try to clarify their position on this. The better we understand each other, the less we've got to fight about... Can anyone explain why encoding syntax is more important than the Infoset interface? bob wyman
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