Using XML (or JSON) for inter-thread communication

["Pete Cordell" <petexmldev@codalogic.com>]

We all know that increasing processor speed has pretty much run its course 
(for now) and that the way to increased system performance is via using 
multiple cores and threads.  However, parallel programming is difficult.

One of the problems is sharing state across threads and getting race 
conditions etc.

However, systems like web services are effectively multi-process / 
multi-threaded and seem to scale well.  Quite often web services (and 
systems like them) use XML or JSON to communicate between the various 
systems.

Which makes me wonder, can you compress the 'web services' model down to the 
level of threads and use XML or JSON for your inter-thread communication? 
Can you define your interfaces using some sort of schema and use REST or 
similar approaches?  Would this help simplify parallel programming, perhaps 
as one of a basket of techniques?

Does anybody have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Pete Cordell
Codalogic Ltd
Interface XML to C++ the easy way using C++ XML
data binding to convert XSD schemas to C++ classes.
Visit http://codalogic.com/lmx/ or http://www.xml2cpp.com
for more info