Packaging (was Re: [xml-dev] Interoperability)

[David Megginson <david@megginson.com>]

James Clark writes:

 > OpenOffice is also using ZIP as a packaging format for XML. See
 > 
 >   http://xml.openoffice.org/faq.html#4
 > 
 > I think a ZIP-based packaging format makes a lot of sense, but getting all 
 > the details right is non-trivial.  An OASIS TC would be a natural place to 
 > standardize this given the overlap with entity resolution catalogs.

It makes sense because it's widely deployed and proven to work (as
most of you know, Java's JAR format is zip-based).  The problem is
that ZIP is non-streaming -- you have to download the entire zip file
before you can start processing it, since the directory information is
at the end.  Until we know what people are actually going to do with
this stuff, it's hard to figure out the cost/benefit balance.


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson
david@megginson.com