RE: The relentless march of abstraction (fwd)

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

As if HTML were the only rendering language 
and web browsers were the only clients....

Assertion:  Client-side XML depends on the 
services of a robust XML processor to do 
heavy lifting chores.   Server side does too. 
The problem is designing messages that 
work well for multiple configurations of 
common processes. 

1.  How many chores does it do before 
it becomes one mother-fat library object 
itself in bad need of modularization?

2.  Do the inconsistent data models 
of the various chore handlers make 
the noisiness of the result unendurable?

Bits on the wire WON'T do it.  That way 
lies endless consulting costs and increasing 
coupling to vendor-specific idiosyncracies.  We see 
it every day here where different parsers 
and different handlers are making a nightmare 
of network messaging apps such that we have 
to tell our partners *XML.DLL version zed* 
or nothing, or we have to build all the 
components and frankly, why bother with 
XML if we have to do that.

This is real world stuff from real programmers 
doing real work and all very hosed that XML 
technology is not living up to the promise 
of blind interoperability based on the spec.

So, kindly get down to that and ignore the 
relentless FUD.  The march is relentless because 
it is trying to go somewhere.  We'd like to 
know a little bit more about the destination. 
IOW, how many sets of PSVI properties have 
to be handled and how soon will that be 
defined much less implemented?

Y'all shot the grove guys down and claimed 
you knew more and could do a better job. 
Our feet are waiting to vote.

Len 
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Winer [mailto:dave@userland.com]

I agree with Don and Tim here.

Especially if there's a server on the user's machine, reading XML feeds,
doing a lot of churning, and generating HTML that any 4.0-level browser can
render.