xml-dev - RE: blocks

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 02:08 PM 7/6/00 -0500, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>Can you summarize this one for us?  There are 
>too many things with nnML in them these days to 
>read it all.  Off the top, it looks like a layer over 
>TCPIP, so what is the application and what requirements 
>is it intended to meet?

Blocks isn't really an ML, though it certainly uses XML and includes an ML
to do some of its work.

My reading of it (which is still preliminary) is that it provides a generic
protocol on which computers can exchange information in a peer-to-peer way.
 The IETF calls it an "application protocol framework for
connection-oriented, asynchronous request/response interactions".

I'd like to think it'll provide a better substrate than HTTP for exchanging
XML messages between systems, but I'm still figuring it out.  In
particular, I'm not certain how the Exchange Protocol fits with the rest of
the Blocks work.  I also have my usual set of concerns about complexity.

I'll be following this fairly closely, but it'll be a few weeks before I've
really digested it, I'm afraid.  There's a lot more information on
BXXP/beep at Invisible Worlds' Web site:
http://invisible.net/

I'd love to hear from others on the list if they have more information.
I'm a little concerned that the XML community and the IETF community don't
seem to communicate very often, and I'd like very much to hear that there
are some Blocks folks on this list.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
http://www.simonstl.com - XML essays and books

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