RE: [xml-dev] XML is easy, was: Re: SV: [xml-dev] XML=WAP? And DOA?

["Derek Denny-Brown" <derekdb@microsoft.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Borden [mailto:jborden@mediaone.net]
> Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 2:59 PM
> To: Mike Champion; xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: [xml-dev] XML is easy, was: Re: SV: [xml-dev] XML=WAP? And
DOA?
> 
> Mike Champion wrote:
> 
> > 1/14/2002 8:00:17 AM, "Jens Jakob Andersen, PDI"
> > <jens.jakob.andersen@post.dk> wrote:
> 
> >
> > >3. XML is not easy.
> >
> > Hmmm, I'm of two minds.  On one hand, the whole bloody mess
> > of specs is a nightmare, but I really do believe that the
> > bare essentials -- well-formed elements, attributes, text
> > with a little help from SAX, a DOM subset, and an XPath/XSLT
> > subset -- provides quite a bit of gain for not much pain.
> 
> XML is easy. It is the problems people are trying to address with XML
that
> are hard.

Given the amount of time I spend explaining 'simple' Namespace, XPath,
XSD, DTD, etc.. issues to people, I would fall heavily on the 'not easy'
side of the issue.  It is 'easy' if you take the time to sit down and
study it and think about it.  The problem is that XML's design suffers
some serious impedance mismatches with your average app developer, at
least in my experience.  The problem is not so much that things are
complicated, but that things are not what is expected by a large
percentage of people trying to _use_ it.  Most of the people who sit
down design/code applications which use XML are not members of XML-Dev.
They do not have easy access to experienced XML heads.  The pick up and
use just-enough to get the job done.  

Part of my job ends up being to convince people that XML really is
complex enough to mandate using existing tools, rather than
rolling-your-own.  XML is simple enough to fool people into thinking
that they can get away with customized code, but in the open world of
the internet, this is dangerous.  A public webservice should only accept
_well_formed_ XML, not just something which looks like XML, otherwise
you end up with customers depending on the ability to accept
non-well-formed XML.  Convincing your average developer that standards
conformance is like pulling teeth.  Developers are taught to cut corners
for performance, so arguing that such 'obvious' spots for improvement as
XML parsing, need the extra work to be conformant (especially when you
are Microsoft, the Evil Empire <g>), is not an easy sell.

XML-Dev is a wonderful little world, but the people here are hardly
representative of the average XML user, in many, many ways.

-derek

The views expressed above are my own and are not necessarily those of my
employer.