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Re: What is XML's sweet spot?

• From: ht@markup.co.uk (Henry S. Thompson)
• To: "Costello\, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
• Date: Thu, 18 Feb 2016 17:53:11 +0000

"Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org> writes:

> Arjun Ray wrote [2]:
>
> 	the authors [of a paper criticizing XML] do go wrong in 
> 	characterizing XML as a "mechanism for serializing structured
> 	data", which is precisely where all the bad karma originates.
>
> 	if the question is "a flexible, efficient, automated mechanism for
> 	serializing structured data", then just about all of the time XML is
> 	_not_ the answer.

I strongly disagree.  First, distinguish between human-authored
vs. automatically generated.  Then, distinguish between human-targeted
vs. automatically consumed.  Finally, consider whether
trust boundaries and/or mission-critical integrity constraints are
involved, i.e. whether validation is needed.

For the _very_ large space of automatically-generated and -consumed
information, where validation is required, XML remains the sweet-spot
for semi-structured data, in my opinion.  And there are lots and lots
of systems that do this.

ht
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  • What is XML's sweet spot?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>