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Re: 3 Sins of XML Usage

• From: Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>
• To: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:21:33 -0400

On Thu, 2012-10-25 at 16:46 +0000, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> Sin #1: Using Java to Process XML 

"Sin" is a strong word for many people. But maybe programming with the
Java DOM is a living hell, so you have a point.

The real message is "use a domain-specific language such as XPath, XSLT,
XQuery, and don't process XML directly."

> Sin #2: Designing XML in an Object-Oriented (OO) Fashion

If we take the fundamental characteristics of OOP to be data hiding,
implicit dispatch and message passing (e.g. from SmallTalk 80), then no,
because these are orthogonal issues to XML design. If you mean, XML as
objects then yes - XML elements are not generally objects in the OO
sense. They don't have methods or classes.

However, class-based inheritance (the usual OO mechanism for implicit
dispatch, so you can say theShape->draw() and the drawing function
appropriate to that particular shape gets used) overlaps with
ontological inheritance (is-a), and ontological inheritance, the is-a
hierarchy, is often very appropriate for XML.


> Sin #3: Neglecting the Format of the Data

How far down you go is always subjective and is subject in particular to
cost/benefit speculation (I shall not ennoble that field with the term
"analysis" since it's generally a form of Information Astrology).

Your PDF document mentions IETF specs, and in a network protocol you may
well end up labelling mantissa and exponent of a floating point number
separately. On the other hand
  <timestamp date="Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:11:20 -0400">...
is perfectly fine in other IETF specs. (it's unfortunate that XML Schema
doesn't recognise RFC2822 format as a date, I note in passing...)

You neglect to mention the biggest "XML Sin" of all, which is true of
almost everything we humans tend to do... it's making up rules, telling
people what to do or what not to do in all situations. There are times
(albeit not very many) when using DOM in Java is actually just fine, and
there are times when a simple schema is appropriate, and there are times
when OO design is very helpful. But there are not, I think, times when
considering the context of a design first and best/worst practice guides
second is a bad idea. :-)

Regards,

Liam


-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org freenode/#xml
Co-author, 5th edition of "Beginning XML", Wrox, Summer 2012

• References:
  • 3 Sins of XML Usage
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>