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Re: [xml-dev] Microsoft FUD on binary XML...
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Bob Wyman wrote:
Michael Rys wrote:
Binary XML in my opinion flies in the face of loosely-coupled
interoperability.
Pure FUD.
...
There is nothing about binary encodings that interferes with
loose coupling of systems or interoperability as long as those
encodings are clearly defined and consistently implemented by both
sides of a connection. The exact same conditions apply to the use of
XML. XML is only useful in a network where both ends of a link
understand what XML is and how to work with it. The situation is no
different for binary stuff.
As usual, I find myself on the MicroSoft side, to a certain extent.
I guess it may come down to what you consider "loosely coupling" to be.
I tend to
see loose-coupling to be, at heart, the fruits of
* data interchange formats which allow generic manipulation of the data
objects
without requiring detailed metadata,
* REST-like architectures, where state is kept with the data as much as
possible, and
* where the data formats and APIs are public and extensible.
So while ASN.1 and XML may be belong in similar positions on an OSI
stack,
requiring a schema for processing (whether in ASN.1 or PSVI) results in
a more tightly-coupled system than is required for simple generic
processing
of documents. E.g. I can take an XML document and extract the
<title> without
having to know the exact schema.
On the other hand, having schemas does allow a different kind of generic
processing based on standard types rather than element names and
tokens,
which is less closely-coupled than, say, sending type information in a
proprietary
format.
So binary is not necessarily any worse for tight-coupling than PSVI
processing. It just depends on the level of generic operations that
you want to do. For example, using default values in schemas also
means that you cannot read the simple XML of the document
and know what the information in the document is.
Cheers
Rick Jelliffe
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