[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Mark Seaborne wrote :
>> > >2. XML in itself is no more advanced than CSV.
>> >
>> > I still disagree on that; hierarchical self-describing markup
>> > IS a definite advance over CSV.
>>
>> This is one of the hypes about XML, that I'd like to defuse.
>> XML is not any more self-describing than CSV files. E.g.
>>
>> <99874987kjhk>
>> <gnygngyasdada>
>> What is this?
>> </gnygngyasdada>
>> </99874987kjhk>
>>
>> Case proved?
>
>No. I know from your snippet that <gnygngyasdada> is child of
><99874987kjhk>, and that it contains some character data. I
>don't know what
>it means, but I can write some code to parse it, so that
>someone who does
>know what it means can at least look at it.
>
>Big advance on
>
>99874987kjhk,gnygngyasdada,What is this?
>
>or, more likely
>
>What is this?,What is that?,What are those?
>
>With a comma delimited (in its most generic sense) structure I
>don't know
>what is data, what is tag (if any), what relationship fields
>have with each
>other, or even what constitutes a record (I have had to write
>code to handle
>1 record per line and multiple, fixed or variable lines per record).
>
>All the best
>
>Mark
I am sorry but obtaining information about relationships is of little use if
you don't have the corresponding semantics. It is useful for lexical-level
tools, granted, so that you can pretty-print the document, or check
well-formedness, but that's all.
That's why we are saying that XML is no so advanced compared to CSV. Okay,
XML can represent labeled trees, and CSV cannot. But it is not a
"self-described structure", or if you call that a self-described structure,
you have to reckon at CSV is a self-described structure too. XML adds the
hierarchical dimension to CSV, but does not add anything to the meaning of
data.
Regards,
Nicolas
|
