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RE: XML's place in the world

• From: "Michael Kay" <mike@saxonica.com>
• To: "'Simon St.Laurent'" <simonstl@simonstl.com>,<xml-dev@l...>
• Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:24:55 -0000

> My general sense - and this doubtless has a lot of 
> confirmation bias to it - is that XML is retreating to the 
> document-based home territory where it made the most sense 
> anyway.  JSON is easing it off the Web.

I think you're using the term "the Web" to mean "the edges of the web" -
i.e. pretty well the "last hop" to the browser. I think that's an
unfortunate usage, but so long as we know what you mean, I guess we have to
live with it. Anyway, from the rest of your message, you actually seem to be
saying "retreating to document processing and data interchange", which I
have always thought were the two core areas for application of XML, so I'm
not sure I see that as a retreat.  

But data interchange is pretty fundamental to an awful lot of applications,
and if XML is used for interchange, then it tends to pervade the whole
application.

And as always, I'm very suspicious of statements that claim to be
quantitative assessments of industry trends but are actually based on
nothing more than the volume of noise made by the chattering classes. That
simply isn't a good enough metric.

Michael Kay

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: XML's place in the world
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>

• References:
  • XML's place in the world
    • From: "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>