What are the design goals of your (XML) language?

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

Before Java was created, the creators of Java came up with a number of goals for the language: it must be hardware and O/S independent, object-oriented, interpreted, and so forth. [1]

I suspect that all successful programming languages began with its creators laying out goals for the language.

When you create a new XML vocabulary, you are creating a new language. Before creating a new XML language, do you first lay out a set of goals for the language?

I suggest the following could be used as a starting point for a set of goals:

1. (Where relevant) There must be an easy on-ramp from the current non-XML data format to the new XML-formatted data. That is, if one understands the current data format, it should be a small step to understand the new XML-formatted data. The new XML language should favor simplicity and transparency over cleverness and complexity.

2. Data dependencies (co-constraints) must be readily expressible under the new XML format. The implementation of the data dependencies must be understandable by Subject Matter Experts and the (Schematron) implementation must execute in an efficient and timely manner.

3. The new XML format must be easily converted to JSON and conversely the JSON must be easily converted to XML.

4. The data formats must be round-trippable: 

a. Convert the current data format to the new XML format and then convert the XML back to the current data format. The resulting document must be semantically identical to the starting document.

b. Convert the XML-formatted data to JSON and then convert the JSON back to the XML-formatted data. The resulting XML must be semantically identical to the starting XML.

5. The new XML-formatted data must have a reasonably small memory footprint when compressed. 

6. (Where relevant) It must be possible to map the elements used in the new XML-formatted data to the elements used in related XML that other communities use.

What goals would you add to this list?

/Roger

[1] Java goals: cecs.wright.edu/~tkprasad/courses/cs884/java1Goals.ppt