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At 10:43 AM -0500 4/15/04, Hunsberger, Peter wrote:
>Oh come on, if I have a XML DOM and ship it between two classes do you
>expect me to check for well-formedness? How about if I serialize that
>DOM and ship it across RMI? I may need to check the validity of the
>data structure, but "well formedness" is purely an artifact of the
>(character version of the) XML syntax... Now what exactly is the
>difference between sending a serialized XML DOM across RMI and shipping
>some other "binary" XML format?
First of all, a serialized DOM is not an XML document. Let's be clear
about that. That being said, I wouldn't trust such a serialized DOM
for a New York minute. I would insist that the idiot sending it send
me real XML instead, and if they refused I would indeed try to dump
it to XML and reparse. The chance that you can actually get a DOM
object through RMI intact is miniscule.
I don't expect your program to check its internal data structures for
well-formedness at every step. (I do expect your program to check any
preconditions on published methods though.) If one of those data
structures is a DOM Document, fine. But we're not talking about that.
We're talking about shipping data between different processes on
different machines and different architectures. XML is interoperable
across this. DOM isn't.
So I guess what I'm saying is you're right. There's no difference
between sending a serialized XML DOM across RMI and shipping some
other "binary" XML format. they're both incredibly fragile things
that will break and probably sooner rather than later.
--
Elliotte Rusty Harold
elharo@metalab.unc.edu
Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003)
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA
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