[Sussex] ongoing - XML Is Too Hard ???

[Steve Dobson]

Geoff

On 03 April 2003 at 09:46 Geoff Teale
> In short, as someone who has worked on XML based standards 
> (principly SVG 1.0) I would say this:
> 
> XML is great when used for what it was designed for, but
> it is not the answer to everything.  People have jumped on
> XML because it's a good buzzword and buzzwords sell books,
> databases and application servers and your average programmer
> wants to be in XML because it seems like a good career move
> (like learning VB - see how that one works out over the next
> few years ;) ).

A very good point with which I whole heartedly agreed with.
One should never just use a any technology just for the sake
of it.

> XML is perfect where you have complex data that needs to be 
> used in many different way (in terms of understanding and
> presentation).  If you data is simple, bespoke and going
> between just two systems then, frankly, you would probably
> be better served with a well documented, simple file format.

I have to disagree here.  A custom standard has one big problem:
It's custom - nothing else knows how to communicate with it.
If it would cost nothing extra to use a standard format 
(weather XML or something else) then I think you should use
the standard.

  1). A future requirement may need a third app to read/write
      the data.

  2). A standard is better understood by new people joining the
      project.

  3). There are third party utilities (library) that can take
      care of the donkey work of reading/writing the data and
      let you worry about the meaning of the data held within.

> XML brings a lot of powerful things to the table via it's 
> standards and the technologies built around it.  You need to
> weigh up the massive advantages inherent in XML against the
> complexities inherent in it.  I would advise this kind of
> atitude to _any_ technology, too many people just jump on what
> the likes of Microsoft are pushing this week.

Agreed.  But by getting more software (even internally developed)
software to use open standards would be one way of breaking the
propriety standards back.  If everything in the corporate data
centre uses a different data standard then one more doesn't
really bother anyone.

If only Microsoft's Office suite can't share data with the rest
of the data centre then a lot more pressure is placed on M$ to
conform.  I notices that M$ has not be slow in adding open 
standards to Word - broken although some of their implementations
have been.

Steve