Re: [xml-dev] XML as fall guy

On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Steve Newcomb <srn@coolheads.com> wrote:

Simon's SlashDot link is full of fightin' words, some aimed at XML, some
at NoSQL, and some at MarkLogic. �In the best tradition of Roger
Costello, let me quote of the ones that spoke to XML, here, and see what
comments at accrues.

When Simon posted that link I happened to take a few spare moments to read many of the comments, difficult as SlashDot makes doing so. Once I'd read the punch line in the article itself, and got the premise of the entire discussion, I pretty much predicted most of what followed, and still, with recent conversations on this list in mind, as I was reading it all, I just laughed and laughed...

Very distasteful timing to mention chickens coming home to roost, I know, but I'll mention it anyway.

�

"...XML, JSON and XQuery are all *data-interchange formats*. Using them
to run your database internals is like using a screwdriver as a hammer."

�

(which was posted by Chris Mattern)

Which, besides the conflation of "XML" and "XQuery" (encouraged/inspired of course by the likes of JSONiq) is an interesting funhouse mirror slant on something I said here a couple of weeks ago in a notoriously heated thread.

If one talks to developers in the reductive way the XML advocates at so many big vendors have spoken to developers, guess what happens as they end up lumping XML and JSON together as equivalent "data-interchange formats." The funny thing is that the vendors NYT lists as mainstream, "IBM, Microsoft and Oracle," are an identical set to the primary perpetrators using XML as a sales tool for features and upgrades by hailing it as the new uber-language for "data". MarkLogic pretty much just came along and rolled with that idea, and from a POV of pleasing their investors, I can't blame them, but it must be galling to see "IBM, Microsoft and Oracle" escape with a halo around their heads. At the same time more JSON-like and more generic NOSQL clans from Hadoop to Cassandra must be even more galled to find themselves lumped together with an XQuery outfit.

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