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

[Geoff Teale]

Steve wrote:
------------
> 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.

Agreed.


> 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.


That's all true, but the point is people are complaining that development
against XML is too complex and cannot deliver in the short term - if those
are companies concerns the they should weigh up whether XML fits their
requirements.  I do not to be convinced of XML's benefits, I am _very_
pro-standardisation, but in the world of business the long term good is
often secondary to "Getting the job done".
 
> 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.

I think I covered my feelings on this.  I would not disagree with you to any
degree, only that the people who are complaining are not doing so becuase
they are interested in the greater good next year, but rather they are
interested in their stock price, today.
 
> 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.

Hmm.  Objectively, there are several Microsoft engineers working on W3C
commities at various levels.  They are all skifull engineers and genuinely
nice chaps and they have bought a lot to the standards table since the late
1990's.  However, there are fewer than their used to be, and the W3C as a
whole is not at all pleased with their parent company (though it recognises
the need to work with Microsoft).  Why is this?  Well, Microsoft have
produced a range of high quality XML tools over the years, but as a company
Microsoft are very interested in XML when it benefits them.   When XML
threatens their monopoly they resort to the kind of standards abuse that
they have always shown.  They say all the right things and deliver something
that benefits no-one.  This is the case with thr XML file formats in Office
2003, for example. It means they can tout their open standard file formats,
but not actually deliver something that is usable in the way that
OpenOffice.org is - to the average IT manager it looks that same so it takes
away one implicit advantage from OOo/StarOffice in his/her eyes.  They have
very cleverly used the biztalk name for both an open standard (and the
commuity around it) and a very proprietary product.  The have attempted (via
marketing and media) to claim SOAP was their invention and indeed that the
whole web-services model was Bill Gates idea.   Finally, their browser, IE.
has gone beyond "embrace and extend" to embrace only the parts of standards
that your competitors don't do better than you, and leave everything else
broken to stop people developing for it - ie., if Mozilla kicks IE's butt on
XML support make sure that key elements of it are completely broken in IE so
that nobody can use it on the open web because it won't work in IE - then
provde an alternative (non-standard) mechanism in IE to achieve the same
thing, thus leveraging IE's larger market share to keep people from
developing for alternative platforms.  Ask yourself why  SVG 1.0 is
unavailable in IE (other than using ADOBE's plugin) even though it has been
complete and tested since before IE 6.0 launched?

-- 
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk
tealeg at member.fsf.org

"And I hope that you die and your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket in the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave 'til I'm sure that you're dead"
 - Bob Dylan, a pacifist :-)

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