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On Friday 04 February 2005 10:59 pm, Michael Champion wrote:
>C. A. R. Hoare's famous quote "There are two ways of constructing a
> piece of software: One is to make it so simple that there are
> obviously no errors, and the other is to make it so complicated that
> there are no obvious errors."
> I submit that the same principle applies to data formats.....
I disagree. Flat files are the simplest data formats, followed by .CSV
ok, let me ask, what is simplest..? a 2005 lamborghini? or a 1930s Ford?
I say the Lambo... stick it into gear and you just shoot off... the old ford
with the windy 3 gears is just not as simple to drive in my opinion...
Back to data, I'd argue that:
<Company Information>
Organisation_Name&="Faulty Towers Hotel"
Country_Code&="UK"
Damage_bill_pw$=4000.40
Insurance_reject_date@=2005-02-21
Good_place_to_visit?=True
</Company Information>
is easier to process than:
Faulty Towers Hotel UK 4000.40 200502 Y
or
Faulty Towers Hotel,UK, 4000.40,200502,0
argh... how to do it in German with the comma in the currency?
Faulty Towers Hotel,UK, 4000,40,200502,0
> Out there in the real world are legions of people who still get
> confused about the oddities in XML and re-invent ideas to make it
> easier that were discussed to death in the WG and xml-dev over the
> years.
Ok, same can be said about double-de-cluching, carburators and crank
starts... Who needs that old rubbish...
> I don't necessarily agree that anyone who understands formal grammars
> at the CS undergrad level should be able to write an XML parser.
I think they should... what were they doing in class otherwise? drinking
beer and skipping class?
but seriously... one of the worst things about xml now is that the people
who study xml in college/university are the very ones that are so often
failing to get a job in industry.
Not that the jobs aren't there. But they can't relate to the industrial uses
of xml and the medium sized companies can't understand a bit of what
the graduates are talking about.... "my XSLT parser has an XPath
validation error in the stylesheet - maybe we need to switch over
to Sax". For business people, that is gobledegook....
> I'm sure this is anathema on this list, but hand-authored XML is
> just not a mainstream use case anymore
most would agree..
That's why we shouldn't be afraid of moving the complexity out
of the application and into the parsers. Times have indeed moved on.
> It's been 7 years next Thursday, about time to think
> about that 10-year review, and maybe time to screw up the courage to
> make some old-timers unhappy :-)
So we all should be finished with our tax writeoff for xml 1.0 ?
How much more do we need to depreciate that old clunker ?
--
Computergrid : The ones with the most connections win.
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