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• XML as a second system (Score:1)

  by clintp (2) on 2003.04.08 21:16 (#18907)

  I've always thought of tagging systems for data storage and interchange as wheels being re-invented left-and-right for every industry and purpose imaginable. SGML, EDI, CSV, etc.. Think back 10 years, 20 years, at what was being touted as the best way to exchange data with other companies. Of course the Y axis of basic ascii-ness of early computing systems was extended in various ways too for foreign alphabets as well (code pages, unicode, etc..).

  XML strikes me as the combined second-system effect of all of the above. Thus it suffers from the duality of "let it be simple" and "it has to do everything." It only feigns at the first for the PR, and grows new tentacles monthly to accomplish the second.

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  • Re:XML as a second system (Score:2)

    by ziggy (25)

    XML strikes me as the combined second-system effect of all of the above.

    Then I would say that Piers' question isn't so much important as much as it's the wrong question to ask.

    XML is a perfectly acceptable solution for one very important problem: interoperability with data exchange. There's a benefit to not creating a new binary format for each and every fragment of information we want to author, exchange, archive or share. (There's even less of a benefit to shoving all of that data into XML and ca