[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Microsoft FUD on binary XML...
Bob Wyman wrote: ...Michael Rys wrote:Binary XML in my opinion flies in the face of loosely-coupled interoperability.Pure FUD. As usual, I find myself on the MicroSoft side, to a certain extent.There is nothing about binary encodings that interferes with loose coupling of systems or interoperability as long as those encodings are clearly defined and consistently implemented by both sides of a connection. The exact same conditions apply to the use of XML. XML is only useful in a network where both ends of a link understand what XML is and how to work with it. The situation is no different for binary stuff. I guess it may come down to what you consider "loosely coupling" to be. I tend to see loose-coupling to be, at heart, the fruits of * data interchange formats which allow generic manipulation of the data objects without requiring detailed metadata, * REST-like architectures, where state is kept with the data as much as possible, and * where the data formats and APIs are public and extensible. So while ASN.1 and XML may be belong in similar positions on an OSI stack, requiring a schema for processing (whether in ASN.1 or PSVI) results in a more tightly-coupled system than is required for simple generic processing of documents. E.g. I can take an XML document and extract the <title> without having to know the exact schema. On the other hand, having schemas does allow a different kind of generic processing based on standard types rather than element names and tokens, which is less closely-coupled than, say, sending type information in a proprietary format. So binary is not necessarily any worse for tight-coupling than PSVI processing. It just depends on the level of generic operations that you want to do. For example, using default values in schemas also means that you cannot read the simple XML of the document and know what the information in the document is. Cheers Rick Jelliffe
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