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From: Murali Mani [mailto:mani@CS.UCLA.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 7:30 AM
> On Tue, 18 Nov 2003, Michael Kay wrote:
>
> > No, space has nothing to do with it. The benefit is that it becomes
a
> > feasible proposition to extract the information in the document in
ways
> > that don't depend on the availability of Microsoft software.
>
> that sounds reasonable, however can we be sure Microsoft will not
define a
> custom binary format for storing XML documents from Office?
>
[Michael Rys] You mean like the format used in the .doc files? :-)
Binary XML in my opinion flies in the face of loosely-coupled
interoperability. By adding a "standard" binary XML format (be it based
on ASN PER/BER or some other scheme) the interoperability gets
bifurcated and the advantage of a single, auditable, interoperable
format to be used in loosely-coupled environments disappears. In
closely-coupled systems, you can use something else than XML (or a
binary format). Since the coupling is closed, you do not need to follow
a standard (although there are some reasons why you still may use XML).
> > > also, I think lot of people are familar with security
> > > loopholes in XML using processing instructions etc... what
> > > kind of security loop holes need to be fixed??
> >
> > There are no security loopholes in XML, only in the software that
you
> > use to process it.
>
> Is it not possible to specify some bad processing instructions? I
think an
> example of a bad processing instruction (that I am thinking of) and
why it
> is not a problem will help..??
[Michael Rys] A processing instruction is just a special form of Markup.
The software needs to understand it to do anything with it. So if the
software understands a dangerous PI, then you may have a security issue,
if the software does not understand any PI, then you should not.
> best, murali.
>
>
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