Re: [xml-dev] Re: [ubl-dev] Top 10 uses of XML in 2007

["Stephen Green" <stephen.green@bristol.gov.uk>]

Hi Elliotte

Can any of these arguments be verified?

" (Compare OpenDocument to the 
equivalent Microsoft Office binary, for example.)"

isn't that specious? The OO file is zipped and both are XML
for the main part, to varying degrees turned into binary
(depending on which version of the MS office file you mean).

The comparison between the unzipped ODF and the zipped ODF
is the more realistic one of course. Guess which is biggest. Add
to that the fact that having a type of compression which is
greatly improved by the use of a schema (so you can leave out
a lot of the tag characters along with the usual compression)
- optimised either for performance or for space (are you telling
me these optimisations are erroneous?) and you get some
barely disputable facts. 

Which do the military forces use?

Then use these extra compression technologies to improve
web services too. 

Only question is what is the overhead in terms of performance
in integrating with text-based systems - having to compress
at one end and decompress at the other. Still that doesn't stop
OO dealing with compressed XML. Could a browser dealing in text
XML (or HTML) handle the same amount of information (data and
presentation) more speedily? 

Isn't this all just too obvious to debate?

All the best

Steve



>>> Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu> 19/02/07 16:56:20 >>>
Stephen Green wrote:
> Hi David
> 
> I agree that when we are doing B2B then there may be in many cases
> compression already. In non-B2B though, such as within an
> organisation network or intranet, I would see binary XML as becoming
> commonplace to increase performance. 

And the evidence you have that it will do this is what exactly? A lot of 
people are working under twenty year old assumptions about what is and 
is not fast, that haven't been true for years. Binary formats are not a 
magic panacea to improve performance. In many cases, XML is actually 
smaller than competing binary formats. (Compare OpenDocument to the 
equivalent Microsoft Office binary, for example.)

There are a lot of myths and wild guesses about performance. I don't 
doubt that people who never bother to crack open an analyzer or write a 
good benchmark will switch to binary XML for no good reason. That's a 
big reason I oppose it. The only areas in which the arguments for binary 
XML are the least bit compelling are in the wireless space, and that has 
a lot more to do with battery life than document size.

-- 
*Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo@metalab.unc.edu 
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/

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