Re: Use of XML ?

[Al Snell <alaric@alaric-snell.com>]

On Wed, 1 Aug 2001 mrossi@csc.com wrote:

>      There are some of added benefits if you consider a broader scenario.
> What if you needed to work with another partner who wasn't using the Java
> platform? There are XML processors implemented in many languages.

> What if
> you needed to work with other partners who already used different object
> models?

An XML schema is pretty isomorphic to an object model, as in each element
type thingy is like a form of class. More work will be required to adapt
differing object models to the intervening XML if the object models
differ a lot, it doesn't really save anything in conversion overhead...

> Could you easily transform them, using an industry standard
> mechansim? XML data can be trasnformed using an XSLT implementation (in any
> language that suits you).

XSLT is itself a language, just like Java and friends, don't forget.

> What if you need to transfer theses objects to
> other partners over FTP/SMTP/HTTP? You can do so with XML data instead of
> requiring an ORB or RMI support.

You can do the same with any data format! Ones that use the entire 0..255
byte range rather than stick to a subset will need escaping or base64ing
in SMTP, but IIOP and RMI are just more efficient ways of shifting bits of
data than FTP/SMTP/HTTP, they don't fulfill any special requirements of
the encoded data.

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software