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I completely agree with Paul. I started responding to the original thread until I noticed Paul had already said everything I was going to point out and more.
XML is data, not objects. Understand this for it is the zen of XML.
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Prescod [mailto:paul@prescod.net]
Sent: Wed 10/23/2002 12:32 PM
To: tblanchard@mac.com
Cc: xml-dev
Subject: [xml-dev] What is XML For?
tblanchard@mac.com wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, October 22, 2002, at 11:15 PM, Paul Prescod wrote:
>
>> No, the structure of the request and the response is generally
>> completely unrelated to the underlying structure of the data store. In
>> fact, the structure of the request and the response is ideally an
>> international standard like SVG, RSS, HRML, ebXML etc. This structure
>> is unrelated to the databases you use to structure it.
>
>
> Can't be true.
>
> The request must name elements in the underlying data store and
> enumerate at least part of the their relationship and optionally specify
> the format of the output. You both expose underlying store structure in
> a request and specify.
>
> SELECT t1.first_name, t1.last_name, t2.country_name FROM t1 user, t2
> locale WHERE t1.locale_code = t2.locale_code;
>
> If I see enough of these queries I can fully deduce the underlying
> structure of the data store.
You keep talking about queries but I am not. I'm talking about XML. A
_request_ is submitted using either pure HTTP or HTTP+XML. That request
is expressed in terms of business objects, not elements or attributes or
anything to do with the physical representation of the data (either in a
database or on the wire). Here's the canonical (silly) example:
-->
<getStockQuote company="MSFT"/>
<--
<quote>15</quote>
Now tell me, is there a relational or object database behind that? What
protocol is the server using to keep in contact with the stock exchange?
What do you know other than that there exists a compnay called "MSFT"
that can answer stock quotes.
(as an aside, I would _never_ do a stock quote that way for a variety of
reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion)
> ... They are more than related - they are
> tightly coupled. XSL transformation rules are similar. I can deduce
> much of the structure of the underlying XML document from the XSL style
> sheet.
The XML document is a _representation_ of the underlying data. It could
be (and usually is) generated by a Turing complete process. You know
nothing about the underlying data except what the process chooses to
show you.
> ...
> Now, if you want to argue that the XML being described is removed from
> the underlying datastore that produced it. Sure. Two transformations
> produce some flexibility but any one transformation is brittle with
> respect to the datastore on either side of it.
Obviously. What's your point? You need an output for a transformation.
An XML document is a very convenient output. A SQL view is a very
inconvenient output. You asked about the difference between SQL and XML
and there's your answer.
>...
> So you want an interchange format.
Bingo! That's what XML is.
> ... There's nothing wrong with that.
> I'll go so far as to say that a universal object interchange format is a
> good thing. A way to serialize object networks that is useful for data
> interchange is a good thing.
You are presuming that people want to interchange objects. But they
don't always (or even usually) want to interchange objects. They want to
interchange data. Some nodes will represent the data as objects. Some
nodes will represent it as lists of list. Some nodes will represent it
as hashtables. That's loose binding.
> But XML doesn't look anything like what you would get if you were to
> serialize a network of objects. Its quite different. Worse, the object
> to XML serialization scheme is open to interpretation in a big way. (I
> know attributes vs elements is an oldie - and I don't want to respark
> debate). The mapping between XML and say ER models isn't very clean or
> well defined.
Right again. That's the beauty of it! When I see an XML document I
shouldn't know or care whether the node that produced it was thinking in
terms of ER or objects or lists or hashtables or tuples or ...
> ... Too many homegrown ideas running around and the mapping
> problem makes the so-called Object-Database impedance mismatch look
> minor by comparison.
If you consider impedance mismatches a problem, then yes, XML causes a
huge problem. If you consider them an opportunity to use the best
techniques for a particular job, then XML makes more sense. Relational
databases are kick-ass for holding a kind of information. Objects are
wonderful for in-memory representation of that information. Objects and
relations have an impedance mismatch because they are solving different
problems. XML and objects have an impedance mismatch because they are
solving different problems.
>...
> This issue has been solved other ways. Any ER or OO information model
> can be completely described using arbitrary nestings of Maps
> (Dictionaries for Smalltalkers), Lists, and Strings. If you like you
> can provide a little extra support for automatic coercion for numbers
> and dates. There is absolutely no piece of information that can't be
> represented with this small set of primitives. NextSteppers call these
> PLists (property list) and its really easy to rebuild an object/data
> network from a plist. In fact, its easy to automate.
Now I know the origin of those horifically silly, dumbed-down data
structures on my Macintosh harddrive. (I got quite a kick out of them)
Anyhow, plists are so 1990s. The modern alternative to XML is YAML. You
should join the mailing list, you'll find many people who feel as you do.
What are the schema, addressing and transformation languages for plists?
Also, consider that plists are typically not shared between many
different programs. Is there any plist-vocabulary that has _hundreds of
tools_ around it like XHTML, RSS, SVG or Docbook?
The more vocabularies are shared, the harder it becomes to extend or
modify them without breaking any particular application. Which is to say
that in the types of applications XML is designed for, there is _almost
always_ an impedance mismatch between the _shared representation_ of the
data and the _in-memory_ representation that any particular application
uses. This is simply because different programmers solve different
problems in different ways!
Because plists are typically not shared, there is no need for a schema
language for them and seldom an impedence mismatch between them and
their applications. Which is to say, they are not in the same problem
space as XML.
> I don't see the same thing with XML. Instead we get the DOM - which
> doesn't look like any other datamodel used to represent information ever
> used in the history of information modeling - oh yeah - except for
> HTML-ish syntax.
The DOM is an in-memory representation of a serialization format. It is
not the representation your application would typically use at runtime
(unless your application is an XML manipulation tool).
> ... But HTML was a hack. Now the hack is enshrined.
Smalltalk and Nextstep had from 1978 to 1998 to take over the world.
Somehow they failed but XML succeeded. Perhaps you should think through
the reasons for that.
>...
> No, that would be card image format (line oriented if you like) ascii.
> The next one would be RFC 822 messages.
Yes, XML could be considered a successor to those standards...of course
it is substantially more powerful in its handling of character sets,
hierarchy and links.
> ... And XML is not yet universally
> used - its only universally buzzed about. I have yet to adopt it for
> anything practical at all because I'm still walking around and around it
> saying to myself "what could have possibly lead them to THIS?"
You'd be hard pressed to find a computer today that does not ship with
an XML parser used pretty close to the operating system level. Plists on
Macintosh. Driver information on modern versions of Windows. Package
maangement on many Linux platforms. etc.
Paul Prescod
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