RE: What is XML's sweet spot?

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

Thanks Alain, Simon, and Henry. 

One thing that stuck out as I read Henry's message is the word "semi-structured":

> XML remains the sweet-spot for semi-structured data

Henry, do you mean that XML's sweet-spot is just with mixed content? Fully-structured XML is not in its sweet spot? 

XML with mixed content:

      <Comment>This is a <emp>very</emp> nice widget</Comment>

Fully-structured XML:

      <Book>
            <Title>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</Title>
            <Author>Mark Twain</Author>
            <ISBN>0486280616</ISBN>
      </Book>

Mixed content XML is in. Fully-structured XML is out. Is that what you are saying?

/Roger


-----Original Message-----
From: Henry S. Thompson [mailto:ht@markup.co.uk] 
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2016 12:53 PM
To: Costello, Roger L. <costello@mitre.org>
Cc: xml-dev@lists.xml.org
Subject: Re: What is XML's sweet spot?

"Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org> writes:

> Arjun Ray wrote [2]:
>
> 	the authors [of a paper criticizing XML] do go wrong in 
> 	characterizing XML as a "mechanism for serializing structured
> 	data", which is precisely where all the bad karma originates.
>
> 	if the question is "a flexible, efficient, automated mechanism for
> 	serializing structured data", then just about all of the time XML is
> 	_not_ the answer.

I strongly disagree.  First, distinguish between human-authored
vs. automatically generated.  Then, distinguish between human-targeted
vs. automatically consumed.  Finally, consider whether
trust boundaries and/or mission-critical integrity constraints are
involved, i.e. whether validation is needed.

For the _very_ large space of automatically-generated and -consumed
information, where validation is required, XML remains the sweet-spot
for semi-structured data, in my opinion.  And there are lots and lots
of systems that do this.

ht
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