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On Fri, 28 Mar 2003, Mike Champion wrote:
> Not wanting to open up too big a can of worms, but perhaps data is hard for
> *OO* programmers, since the principle of encapsulating data behind accessor
> methods has been promoted for a decade or so now. Geezers who learned that
> Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs shouldn't have a problem with
> labelled trees, or text patterns in strings, or whatever. <duck>
Personally i see no conflict with XML as a data format and OO paradigms.
On the contrary its extensible, hierarchical structure lends itself
perfectly to polymorphic models. Which is a lot more than what can
be said for relational db's!
OO developers, just like every one else, simply need to break the API
barrier to make full use of the XML data format.
Sure it'll seem perfectly sensible if you've spent 15 years writing RDBMS
applications to force XML into a db and then write another db app like you
already have done a hundred times. But that's essentially taking a
hierarchical structure and forcing it flat, loosing valuable
and useful information in the process.
Anyone who's tried to do anything even remotely OO using eg CMP EJB's
(container managed persistance EJB's) knows how poorly simple class
hierarchies map to relational db's - database tables simply aren't
polymorphic!
With XML, we've a data (and document!) format which easily reflects the
inherent structure of OO models. Furthermore it's extensible, which means
flexibility in both the coding and data department.
Personally, I'm certain that the future of object-oriented development
will be tightly linked to that of XML, not only because of market pressure
but because the paradigms are ultimately compatible.
Of course, the super-efficient, extensibly indexed and nativly-XML backend
still needs to be perfected!
/m
Martin Klang
http://www.o-xml.org - the object-oriented XML programming language
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