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Myths of XML

• From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• To: "xml-dev@lists.xml.org" <xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
• Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2015 14:56:12 +0000

Hi Folks,

Here is an excellent article on the myths of XML (well, actually, the myths of XMPP, which is an XML-based instant messaging protocol):

http://wiki.xmpp.org/web/index.php?title=Myths 

Some of the Juicy Parts:
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The hypothesis: XML is inarguably slower than JSON and other similar syntaxes, and XMPP will subsequently suffer in terms of performance.

The fact: XML is just as fast as JSON, and therefore XMPP pays no penalty.
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The hypothesis: The core of XMPP is so small it has no practical use, and features that are essential for my use case have been bolted on as an afterthought.

The fact: XMPP is designed to be extensible, and many extensions have very broad deployment.
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The hypothesis: XMPP stanzas are just too verbose to work on mobile.

The fact: XMPP has been successfully deployed over SATCOM and HF.
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The hypothesis: XMPP stanzas can be lost, therefore the system is unreliable.

The fact: XMPP typically uses reliable stream transports, so even without extensions it's pretty reliable.
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The hypothesis: XMPP is unsuited to the web because angle brackets and stuff.

The fact: XMPP has been successfully deployed to thousands of websites and has had pure Javascript libraries since its early days.
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/Roger