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len,
There's some bright folks here with some good insight. XML has an interesting history, and folks like yourself that have been around this thread for 15 years have a perspective that folks who joined in the past 5 or 10 years do not. I was tasked with implementing an XMLParser in early 1999. The pre-dot-com bust days. Folks that ran around Silicon Valley in the mid to late 1990's also have a perspective that others do not. The Wild West development style. Many of us worked 1099 and were a 1 man company with 3 jobs. That was normal back then. That's where I was while you folks were designing XML Parser interfaces on this thread. In December of 1998 the largest HMO committed to using XML for all data transport in the implementation of a database that is shared between hospitals. It was the largest software project in the world. IBM Global Services and SAIC had won development bids for this $2B undertaking that employed 600 people. I was responsible for "The XML-Object Framework" that would be used by all development teams to connect everything. I have NEVER subscribed to [xml-dev] until just now. The only parser I can remember from back then was Xpat. It was the fastest tokenizer in the performance tests we ran. We wanted to make so many enhancements that I begged for a 2 week experiment to develop our own tokenizer. I think I had to beg twice. In 2 weeks we had a home grown functioning tokenizer in a layer that we could easily swap out with Xpat. It just got better over time and since we had diverged from SAX and DOM very early most discussions going on at [xml-dev] were not applicable to our application of XML. Just a little historic note about how all this came to be. From this thread and from outside this thread. Brian > Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 09:40:54 -0500 > From: cbullard@hiwaay.net > To: xml-dev@lists.xml.org > Subject: RE: [xml-dev] XML For The Average Monkey > > " I hear you are returning to this forum from a 10 year sabbatical? " > > I've never left in terms of reading it. I am building XML-based > systems again as a full-time job. It wasn't a sabbatical. It was a > "XML Is Done; Use It When Needed Because It's Fully Baked". And > therefore, it was best to stay quiet because I had nothing to > contribute. Once back in the game, this is a good place to ask > questions and compare experiences. Everyone here has done this long > enough that no serious question goes unanswered and otherwise, we know > each other well enough to ignore the rest. > > Part of the laissez-faire attitude for some of us is that XML-Dev (as > development) once XML was published became a kibitzing forum and helps > people understand the specification. As a development list, very > little is developed here. Some abstractions are debated repeatedly. > It isn't a matter of discarding "new ideas" but very few new ideas are > presented. For the most part new people who don't realize the world > didn't begin when they entered it present old ideas and these are > debated politely in case new conditions have emerged. Minds aren't > closed; they are skeptical by practice. > > You might want to search the pre-xml archives for a phrase > "object-oriented pixie dust". Creating objects with markup is a > perma-thread from the early days. The problem as I recall was some > optimizations simplify one problem for a little speed and create > numerous problems in other applications. Tim Bray called such ideas > "premature optimization" and the answer has been "good stuff for some > specialized processors doing specific tasks". > > If you want a lexically concise answer, John Cowan is the better man. > Amelia made a concrete suggestion. That's the next wicket. > > XML is used both on the web and off the web. The speed of reading XML > in and out of memory isn't the same constraint in all application > domains. Some XML documents are quite large by some standards. > Others not so much. When building large integrated document sets in > say technical publication applications, if an OID complicates the > production process and toolsets by a fraction without an offsetting > measurable and explainable gain, it will be discarded. If XML is > re-architected such that it is required, XML will be discarded. > > len > > _______________________________________________________________________ > > XML-DEV is a publicly archived, unmoderated list hosted by OASIS > to support XML implementation and development. To minimize > spam in the archives, you must subscribe before posting. > > [Un]Subscribe/change address: http://www.oasis-open.org/mlmanage/ > Or unsubscribe: xml-dev-unsubscribe@lists.xml.org > subscribe: xml-dev-subscribe@lists.xml.org > List archive: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/ > List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php |