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Thank you all for this stimulating dialogue!
David lyon wrote:
<< Put another way, the compressed xml file was 2.5MB and the
CSV file was 34MB. >>
This is incorrect. The compressed CSV was 150 KB.
And XML took 5 minutes simply to uncompress (unzip) and another 10 minutes
to parse. The CSV did both in about 1 minute.
<<Most business apps need to hold multiple sets of arrays
and thus the need for something like xml.>>
A CSV can hold many different arrays in a single file.
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: david.lyon@computergrid.net [mailto:david.lyon@computergrid.net]
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 6:19 PM
To: Stephen E. Beller
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: RE: [xml-dev] Data streams
All,
Mind if I pull apart this report for some further analysis?
Quoting "Stephen E. Beller" <sbeller@nhds.com>:
> I tried Steven's experiment from a different angle. I filled an Excel XP
> spreadsheet with a single-digit number, saved it in both XML and in a
> comma-delimited text file (CSV). I then compressed both with WinZip and
then
> opened both with Excel. Here's what I found:
>
> The XML file was 840MB, the CSV 34MB -- a 2,500% difference
> Compressed, the XML file was 2.5MB, the CSV 0.00015MB (150KB) -- a 1,670%
> difference.
True. XML files are usually bigger.
> Equally dramatic is the time it took to uncompress and render the files as
> an Excel spreadsheet: It took about 20 minutes with the XML file; the CSV
> took 1 minute -- a 2,000% difference.
True. The old parts of Excel are written in assembly language
by true masters. They are efficient. The CSV era was at the
same time as the assembly language coding.
The new XML parts are written by programmers of the bloatware
era. They are not optimised to the same degree.
They are probably written in high level languages and I would
guess have never been "profiled". That's an old word... maybe
it's something that is never done with xml... wouldn't be surprised.
In perspective, Excel isn't a tool (imho) that a user would
use to deal with xml data in a commercial environment. As
rendering tags is absolutely no use to a business user. They
want the product data printed like a pricelist,or a purchase
order printed like a purchase order. xml tags are alienspeek
or geekspeek at best.
But some people do optimise and profile their XML. A "real"
xml trading app I would bet would fare better than excel.
> My conclusion is that delimited text files handle large
> arrays of data more efficiently.
Maybe, but providing only a single array is used.
Most business apps need to hold multiple sets of arrays
and thus the need for something like xml.
Finally...
> The XML file was 840MB, the CSV 34MB -- a 2,500% difference
> Compressed, the XML file was 2.5MB, the CSV 0.00015MB (150KB) -- a 1,670%
> difference.
Put another way, the compressed xml file was 2.5MB and the
CSV file was 34MB.
Therefore, sending compressed XML data is more efficient
than using CSV and requires less resources to transmit
and send.
David
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