[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Maximally Consumable Data
quoting from article: >Data can be formatted in a number of different ways. A data format may be well suited for one task, but not another; whereas a second data format may be well suited for the later task but not the former. I don't think that formatting of data necessarily leads to a data format, I think the usage is often that data is formatted for presentation. The suitability of a data format to a task part seems phrased wrongly, I guess the way I try to think of it is as follows (not especially well written thoughts come next): Various problem domains naturally lend themselves to specific data representations, some would be most efficiently represented hierarchically, as graphs, in a relational model, in unstructured document formats... There is likely some overlap between how a particular form of data should be best represented. There are a number of ways that these representations are generally transmitted currently, hierarchical data is often transmitted in the form of an XML dialect as an example. Thus it is useful to describe XML as a data format; the choice of a data format constrains the following choice of a data structure, it is the choice of a data structure that is often most important to consumability of a format - as an example if one chooses a data structure for one's XML format that will lead to extremely large XML instances it follows that consumability of that format will be limited to those applications, programming languages, and programming libraries that have support for dealing with large XML instances. The choice of a data format and the subsequent choice of a data structure is interlocked with how well suited ones problem domain is to representation in the chosen format, combined with how well designed the data structure is for representing the requirements of the problem domain. (the above was not meant as a definite summary of how I would describe this situation, but just points I would think of as being most salient) quoting again from article: >List of Consumable Items > * XHTML Version: format your data using XHTML. That will make your data consumable by browsers, and a variety of other devices. I don't know that I feel consuming would be the best way to describe what a browser does with XHTML. > * XML Version: format your data using XML. That will make your data consumable by machines. See above descriptions, formatting your data as XML will at least in theory make your data consumable by machines, but if the chosen structure and limitations set on the structure are such that many actual instances of your data will cause DOM parsers to crash the consumability of the structure you have defined is limited by exactly that extent of its tendency to crash applications made for consuming it. > * JSON Version: format your data using JSON. That will make your data consumable by JavaScript and Ajax applications. XML is generally consumable by the same environments that JSON is consumable by, furthermore both JSON and XML are hierarchical in nature. The only benefit on consumability of these two formats are, I think, that choosing one or the other would lead to developer productivity increases in writing particular applications that need to consume the actual data being sent. But that is really only supposition on my part. Cheers, Bryan Rasmussen On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 1:02 AM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@m...> wrote: > Hi Folks, > > Goal: maximize the consumability of data. > > Here's a short article I wrote on how to achieve this goal: > > http://www.xfront.com/maximally-consumable-data/index.html > > > Comments welcome. > > /Roger > > _______________________________________________________________________ > > XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS > to support XML implementation and development. To minimize > spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. > > [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ > Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@l... > subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@l... > List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ > List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php > >
[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] |
PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced! Download The World's Best XML IDE!Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today! Subscribe in XML format
|