[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Python and JSON vs XML???
On 8/25/05, Uche Ogbuji <Uche.Ogbuji@f...> wrote: > > In the end, as a long-certified XML doc head I think XML is just not > suited to the bit jewelry of highly structured data. It's more suited > to the sloppy exigencies of prose. I think all these rumblings are but > the sign of the poor fit that first became unmistakable when the first > WXS drafts were released, and I'll be amazed if there's any magic > nostrum to be brewed for this by Microsoft or anyone else. This is the only part of your response that I would even think about quibbling with. (I *really* liked "In many ways I think a vicious backlash from programming languages against XML is just what XML needs right now."). I don't disagree that XML is a bit of a stretch at best for pure data applications, as the recent W3C workshop on XSD and the movement toward creating a binary XML WG shows clearly. But as someone noted earlier, XML is itself not as good as SGML for pure dochead applications. XML is not really the best solution for anything, but it's a good enough solution for a lot of stuff. Or maybe it really is the best solution only in those ugly but common cases were information must be human-readable and machine processable, document-like but with lots of embedded structured data. At least I don't see RELAX NG, JSON, etc. as strong alternatives for those in the messy middle even though they definitely are reasonable alternatives for pure dochead and pure data cases respectively. I think the bottom line here is much the same as in a lot of the permathreads: Don't use XML(or XSD, or SOAP, or whatever) because you think it's what you're supposed to do, use it iff it does what you need done more effectively than the alternatives do. For asynchronous javascript clients, JSON may well be a better format to exchange structured data with a tightly-coupled server side component, and that's fine with me. What might worry me is if the JSON folks try to promote it as a better XML than XML *overall*, but from the responses I've seen that's not happening.
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