RE: RE: [xml-dev] Painful USA Today article (was RE: [xml-dev] AN N: RESTTutorial)

["Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@microsoft.com>]

I'm not really sure I understand your point. You go on and on lamenting about business and how XML fails to satisfy it but leave out any concrete details. If you have specific technical concerns I believe all on this list would love to hear them, however simply railing against no one in particular about how XML and its related technologies do not solve specific or general busines problems are just words in the wind floating meaninglessly away. 
 
For instance, the amount of feedback on how XPath 2.0 & XSLT 2.0 do not offer a  compelling cost/benefit ratio for their current users is an example of this and the kind of feedback that tool authors, users, and various members of standards organizations can take to heart. 
 
Even more fruitful would be coming up with a number of business cases and/or classes of XML usage patterns to use in judging how effective the current crop of technologies are at meeting the needs of users and how future specifications should and will fare. 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Bullard, Claude L (Len) [mailto:clbullar@ingr.com] 
	Sent: Wed 5/22/2002 8:09 AM 
	To: 'Simon St.Laurent'; xml-dev@lists.xml.org 
	Cc: 
	Subject: RE: RE: [xml-dev] Painful USA Today article (was RE: [xml-dev] AN N: RESTTutorial)
	
	

	We violently agree except that to push back against the
	requirements of customers is to ensure that there are
	no real applications for that technologically coherent
	technology.  That is how they end up buying big garbanzo
	bean filled salads of toolkits instead of being able
	to get modular pipelined applications.
	
	In my experience, having an application is the best
	way to trim out the fat of the technology.  For it
	to be ubiquitous, it has to solve a problem everyone
	has.
	
	len
	
	
	From: Simon St.Laurent [mailto:simonstl@simonstl.com]
	
	On Wed, 2002-05-22 at 10:52, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
	> We all have passions, causes, reasonable society enhancing
	> agendas.  XML can be part of that, but I believe that even
	> there, saying a thing is good for its own sake is a dangerous
	> assertion of religious zeal, not common sense. 
	
	Is pursuit of technological coherence (never even mind excellence)
	religious zeal?  Does every application need to go through an RFC
	process with bidding and contracts to be useful?
	
	XML isn't good for its own sake.  Neither is technology.  But making
	sure that the technologies we create actually perform as expected
	involves a range of activities that may not be consistent with business
	agendas.
	
	To say that I'm sick and tired of hearing "everybody's doing it, and
	there's money in it" as an excuse for pouring resources into specs that
	have little value when examined outside of dollar-sign glasses is an
	understatement. 
	
	It's (long past) time for people interested in the technology to push
	back against the people interested in the business of technology, even
	if that means biting the hand that feeds us.  XML hype seems to be over
	- maybe it's time to get XML's technological house in order instead of
	chasing the big bucks.
	
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