RE: [xml-dev] json v. xml

["Michael Champion" <mc@xegesis.org>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: derek denny-brown [mailto:zuligag@gmail.com]
> Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 9:58 AM
> To: Robert Koberg
> Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
> Subject: Re: [xml-dev] json v. xml
> 
> > Will an eval'ed JSON object(s) eventually look like a DOM object?
> 
> I sure hope not.  I've always found the DOM a horribly awkward
> programming model.  ...  Most code would just parse the DOM into
> Javascript objects anyway.  JSON skips an entire (expensive) step,
> saving development and runtime costs.

Yup.  I once strongly agreed that an " XML-centric approach also offers the
opportunity for developers to make the mental shift from thinking of XML as
a serialization format to thinking of XML as something with its own features
and benefits: (as Simon put it in
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2007/01/03/the-xquery-chimera-takes-center-stage.ht
ml).  For better or worse, that's just not how mainstream people want to use
XML; they want to skip over the XML stuff as quickly as possible and go
directly from the wire format to the business objects. 

One small data point:  Ralf's few posts on LINQ to XSD (e.g.
http://blogs.msdn.com/xmlteam/archive/2006/11/27/typed-xml-programmer-welcom
e-to-linq.aspx) get more comments and links than all my blogging about LINQ
to XML put together, and the #1 question we got before LINQ to XSD was
announced was "when can I use a schema to bind to an object model?".   

JSON skips this entire expensive schema/databinding step, so I think the
non-geeks who have been using XML in this manner are going to be very
attracted to JSON.

That's not to say that XML or generic tree APIs are doomed, just that they
will be used mostly by people who don't have the luxury of a strong data
contract, and geeks implementing the underlying infrastructure that makes
the XML -> object voodoo work.  Fortunately, all this stuff was designed by
Architecture Astronauts who could  quickly re-purpose XmlHttpRequest,
XmlReader, LINQ, etc. for other formats that sortof resemble XML (a tip of
the hat  to
http://www.megginson.com/blogs/quoderat/2007/01/04/in-praise-of-architecture
-astronauts/ ).