Cydrome Leader wrote:
Is there anything that isn't lame about xml?
Lots. If you're interested, websearch.
XML syntax is not intended to be terse. It's intended to be an
easily-toolable, easily-debuggable interchange format -- and has
succeeded well enough to kill off several binary interchange formats,
because in fact terseness is overrated for that set of tasks. XML has
served as a coalescence point for a whole bunch of useful technology
which was previously trapped in its own little non-interchangable corners.
If you're looking for a back-end data format, XML syntax isn't it...
though depending on your needs, the XML data model may be. See, for
example, the pureXML features in IBM's DB2 database product, which
directly express the XML Infoset -- that isn't just because XML is
trendy, it's because XML is *USEFUL* as a set of concepts.
XML is a tool. Not all tools suit all tasks. If it isn't the right tool
for your purposes, that's fine; some applications really do run in a
vaccuum and talk only to themselves, and for those XML is probably not
the right answer... unless they want the convenience of being able to
leverage other apps and existing libraries rather than reinventing some
of these wheels.
--
() ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Joe Kesselman
/\ Stamp out HTML e-mail! | System architexture and kinetic poetry