Re: Hiding XML to an application (serialization?)

Hi,

I have an application that consists of two components, say A and B.
Component A is a kind of monitoring and control system. It reads application
configuration files (in XML; customer requirement), keeps these files
updated (e.g., updating values on user request) and call component B with
(relevant) configuration parameters. The point is that we want to keep
component A as much independent as possible from the XML "vocabulary" used
in configuration files. In doing so, changes in file definition (e.g., new
parameters) will not (ideally) affect component A. Component A is going to
be developed by a third party, and the idea behind this is that we do not
want to request a change in A in case we discover we have to add, say, a new
configuration parameter.

Lessons learnt in the past show that changing A is (irremediably) more
frequent than expected. I think we can manage configuration files quite well
by defining a set of XSLT scripts to do the dirty work (we would assume this
activity), and then component A would only have to know which is the script
to be executed, its input parameters and input/output XML files. Perhaps
this solution is quite twisted, but it is supposed to work, isn't it? Any
hint will be much appreciated.

Concerning the second part of the problem (calling B with relevant
configuration data), the good news are that we develop this component (and
its interfaces) but I am afraid that:

- B cannot read data from files
- My colleagues in charge of the "B thing" do not want to receive data in
XML. For sure there is a good reason for that (dunno!), but at the end the
problem is the same. I feel a bit stupid playing around with this, but the
point is that we want A to be independent of XML file structure, passing
data to B in a "non-XML fashion" (the XSLT trick above will not work).

The sitemap would look something like the following (for CSV output):
   <map:match pattern="*.csv">
       <map:generate src="a.xml" />
       <map:transform src="sql2csv.xsl" />
       <map:serialize type="csv" />
   </map:match>

I've been reading something about serialization. I do not know if this will
be of help or not (far from being an expert on this; I have never used this
stuff in my life). Any ideas?

I know it sounds weird, but any help on this will be much appreciated
(including that it is impossible to implement; it will allow me to save many
time trying to convince my colleagues :)  )

Many many many thanks in advance,
Angel

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