Re: Build applications using the "simplicity stack"

[a re-posting, made on request]

Arjun, you write: "XML may be useful at the periphery, to move data between systems."

I take a different view.

Did you sufficiently take into consideration that XML-encoded information is addressable, down to the smallest item, in a unified way which could not be more concise and at the same time more intuitive? XML-encoded information can be submitted to powerful operations, effecting extraction, transformation, aggregation. XML turns information into a substrate with which to work, in a way which reminds me of numbers (the substrate) and mathematics (the operations).

Therefore your statement would make sense to me if there were XML, but not XPath, XQuery, XSLT. I think that to speak about the "usefulness" of XML forgetting the existence of these technologies makes little sense, similar to speaking about the usefulness of relational databases without considering the existence of SQL.

Little example. You have two XML files and you are interested in the differences. The following 9 lines of XQuery code, written in two minutes, lists added/removed data paths (see below). Of course it is generic - any two documents can be used. Can you give me examples of how this could be achieved equally easily after leaving XML format?

Kind regards,
Hans-Juergen

declare variable $doc1 external;
declare variable $doc2 external;
let $paths1 := distinct-values(doc($doc1)//*/string-join(ancestor-or-self::*/local-name(), '/'))
let $paths2 := distinct-values(doc($doc2)//*/string-join(ancestor-or-self::*/local-name(), '/'))
return
  <diff>
    <new>{for $p in $paths2[not(.=$paths1)] order by $p return <loc p="{$p}"/>}</new>
    <del>{for $p in $paths1[not(.=$paths2)] order by $p return <loc p="{$p}"/>}</del>
  </diff>

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