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RE: Six Reasons Not to use XML Attributes

• From: David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>
• To: Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>
• Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 15:17:06 +0000

> I'm guessing you skipped the joy of sax parsing?
> 
> :)
> 

Nope, my brain hurts from using almost all XML technology at some point  .
All I'm saying is that this is an artifact of the specific XML technology your using not intrinsic to XML.
Onceaponatime I argued *heavily* for use of attributes wherever possible precisely for this reason.  That it was easier and more efficient to access attributes then child elements.
 
Later as both myself and the tools I used evolved I've switched my personal style oppinion to suggesting limiting (but not removing) use of attributes because in the long run suggesting XML style based on the ease of a particular toolkit is not a forward thinking strategy ... especially as toolkits evolved which make it just as easy (and fast) to get at child elements as attributes.
So now my current philosophy is to use child elements primarily, and attributes infrequently.
The old data-metadata argument.  But its a moving target :)

As for the bounded search problem ,  I argue that's not intrinsic either.  Ive heard of documents with multi megabytes of attributes in a single element. 



----------------------------------------
David A. Lee
dlee@calldei.com
http://www.xmlsh.org

• References:
  • Six Reasons Not to use XML Attributes
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: Six Reasons Not to use XML Attributes
    • From: Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>
  • RE: Six Reasons Not to use XML Attributes
    • From: David Lee <dlee@calldei.com>
  • Re: Six Reasons Not to use XML Attributes
    • From: Andrew Welch <andrew.j.welch@gmail.com>