Myths about using business apps online

TalkBack 18 of 22:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

Re: the XML guys are desperate

As the author of the paper, I really enjoyed and appreciate all the comments and feedback! Again, I'd like to take this opportunity to address some of the comments here.

Jorwell posted two posts telling us his experience and thoughts - doubting the usefulness of XML in some cases; Wolf also posted saying that "XML has its place but ...Anything else is XML abuse".

These are all good points. However, the way I look at XML is:
a>XML as a format or language, is not necessarily always better or superior than others means;
b>the value or attractiveness of XML is not necessarily the format or XML language itself, but the "eco-system" of XML.

To explain the above two points in detail, I'd say, on one side, XML is just a data description format - there is no reason that you can not use some other format or form. --It is entirely up to the developer. Nobody should use XML randomly everywhere just for the sake of being "buzz word compliant".

On the other side, there are a lot of value of using XML in many cases, not because of XML format itself, but because of the broad industry support that this format enjoys: vendor support, the availability of lots of well tested parsers/processors/transformers, the availability of packages to process XML on different platforms and different devices, and a lot of developers have some knowledge of XML. These things are invaluable - they make XML very attractive for many projects: hi, i can use this parser to parse it, i can use that package to transform data in and out from it; It does not matter whether my platform is Unix or Windows, Java or .NET or even mobile devices - I can find packages for handlign XML, and most of my developers know it.

Does it make sense to use XML for presentation layer? Absolutely. I'd not get into details here to argue why it makes sense given the length limitation, but using XML for presentation layer is the trend and the industry is going in this direction, including Microsoft, W3C, Adobe and companies like Nexaweb. Nexaweb can point out lots of customer deployments using XML, solved real-world problems and gained substantial ROI.

Posted by: coachwei   Posted on: 08/19/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now
• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
• The Impact of Virtualization Software on Operating Environments VMware Today's use of virtualization technology allows IT professionals to ... Download Now