Re: [xml-dev] Feasibility of "do all application coding in the XMLlangua

[Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au>]

Mukul Gandhi wrote:
> Hi Roger,
>    There are many software applications, which need imperative
> programming infrastructure (where we should be able to change program
> state at will, like using assignment statement as so on).
>
> Examples of such applications could be,
> 1. Complex business logic (say I am implementing a work flow for an
> insurance company)
> 2. Game programming :)
> 3. GUI programming
>
> and so on.
>
> To my opinion, none of the above tasks can be done (or easily done) in
> XML based languages.
Two comments.

First, the either/or dichotomy of XML language versus non-XML language 
is false. Very often there is in an incremental move towards XML in 
order to allow refactoring and simplification of programming language code.

 For example, for business XBRL (and I know Schematron is used in places 
too) gives richer data to simplify application programming, for game 
programming World of Warcraft's XML user interface reduces what the 
programming language does but still needs Lua, and SwiXML (Swing in XML) 
reduces the workload of Java but still needs it. More stuff gets 
specified declaratively rather than procedurally.

Second, on the specific case of XSLT, XSLT is very often used when there 
is XML-in and XML-out (or HTML out of course).  Where that is not the 
case, XSLT loses a lot of its perceived value.  So the more that the 
first trend (towards declarative refactoring) occurs, the more 
situations exist where XSLT can slot in effectively.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe