xml-dev - Re: XML standards coherency and so forth

["Jeffrey E. Sussna" <jes@kuantech.com>]

I have been thinking more about the issue of coherency between XML-based standards. I think I may have hit upon both the problem and the solution. I think we may be missing the very point of XML. XML is a data representation language. Having represented a domain in an interoperable manner, you can then apply any number of applications to that domain. At least some of the W3 efforts, on the other hand, seem more focused on applications than domains. For example:

WebDAV, DRP, and ICE all need to operate on hierarchies of assets. But they all think about and represent those hierarchies differently. It is easy to imagine a system that wants to apply distributed authoring, replication, and content syndication to the same set of content. Why not start with a common representation for that content, then let the apps expose different sets of operations on top of it? I think such an approach would go a long way towards adding coherency between the various specs under development.

Jeff

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Kuantech, Inc.                            http://www.kuantech.com
Jeffrey E. Sussna, Principal                     jes@kuantech.com

Distributed Content Architectures for Dynamic Online Applications
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