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On Friday 04 February 2005 08:50 pm, Elliotte Harold wrote:
> Bob Foster wrote:
> > A reasonable pov, probably represents the majority, I just don't agree
> > with it. A barrier to entry is a barrier to entry. The fact that it's
> > hard to write an XML parser means it's hard to understand how to use
> > XML, too.
>
> The bottom line is I don't find any arguments based on the difficulty of
> parsing XML to be really compelling, given that we have existence proofs
> that correct, efficient parsing of XML is possible.
Even in a reduced complexity style of xml such as:
<Company Information>
Organisation_Name&="Faulty Towers Hotel"
Country_Code&="UK"
Damage_bill_pw$=4000.40
Insurance_reject_date@=2005-02-21
</Company Information>
there can be a lot of complexity.
Yes, a uni student could do something simple in a week. But getting
systems that use it to be production stable, able to handle commercial
amounts of data and provide subsecond response times take a fair
degree of skill.
Even in one simple element, for example, currencies, Germans
and French express theirs with a comma for the decimal. Whilst
Americans + Australians and others use a period.
so in Germany (after an imaginary currency conversion) we would have:
Damage_bill_pw€=2000,20
Damage_bill_pw$=4000.40
yes, simple enough for a graduate to write a 20 line program for
in their local country, but writing a proper parser is truly in the league
of the professionals.
Then, multiply the number of records by 50000 and demand that
your parser runs quickly - and suddenly you find that there aren't that
many people out there wanting to do it commercially.
and I didn't even get to explaining how much of a hobby job it is
not to add in the xpath like support..... and make that run fast enough...
but I'm sure people get the picture....
David
--
Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win.
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