Re: Why do you use XML?
- From: "Bob Powell [MVP]" <bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2008 14:14:20 +0100
#1 Human readability of the data. This is still of considerable importance if you have a problem that just won't quit.
#2 Cross platform portability. The data is expressed in the same way on all machines. Binary formats have issues such as "endianism" to deal with.
#3 There are lots and lots and lots of great tools that understand it.
#4 If the herd is going west, don't try to walk east.
--
--
Bob Powell [MVP]
Visual C#, System.Drawing
Ramuseco Limited .NET consulting
http://www.ramuseco.com
Find great Windows Forms articles in Windows Forms Tips and Tricks
http://www.bobpowell.net/tipstricks.htm
Answer those GDI+ questions with the GDI+ FAQ
http://www.bobpowell.net/faqmain.htm
All new articles provide code in C# and VB.NET.
Subscribe to the RSS feeds provided and never miss a new article.
<jehugaleahsa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1a5a5bb5-420a-4dd5-b8e5-5ec2bc0ea857@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello, everyone:
I have a simple request to anyone interested. We at work are aware of
the (so-called) importance of XML. We have laboriously attempted to
find practical uses of XML. However, in our environment, working with
XML seems like a complete waste of time. For instance, we pull data
from a database and send it to a database.
Recently I attempted to pull a space separated value file into an XML
format and used XSLT to convert it to a comma separated value file.
Well, XSLT doesn't work naturally for anything but XML. It was a waste
of time and it would have been easier to just send the SSV to a CSV
directly with some minimal coding.
Since we work primarily with databases and nothing in-between, I am
really starting to wonder if knowing anything about XML is really all
that useful to my life right now. That is why I would like for
everyone reading to tell me you opinions and practical experiences
with XML. Do you use XML as regularly as hype seems to say you should?
Do you use it in an environment that rarely goes outside of database
interactivity? Do you think XML is all that important to a developer
who can generally write code to perform the same task, potentially
with less effort?
I am personally take the point that XML is rarely needed tool, outside
of the occasional configuration file. And even then, all these tools
like DTDs, XPath, XPointer, XSLT, etc., seem even less used. I feel
like there is this enormous push for XML but see it as only useful in
environments where data is being passed out and about. Am I completely
missing the benefits of XML or is it just my environment?
I can see how it useful to save data out so it can be used later,
especially when a database is not involved. And XML is easier to read
than some pre-XML formats, but it also requires an enormous amount
more space. Thinking about a SSV file that contains over 4MB of data -
converting that document to XML usually triples (at least) the amount
of memory needed. And usually, here, software expects a non-XML
format. For me, it is like putting an extra level of code that not
only consumes an enormous amount of runtime, memory and development
time, but it also ends up not having any benefit at all in the end. I
suppose the world would be a better place if we all started writing
our applications to accept and output XML. I really need a way to
determine, from a developer's point of view, whether XML is a good
decision or just something that sounds good.
What do you think?
Thanks,
Travis
.
- References:
- Why do you use XML?
- From: jehugaleahsa@xxxxxxxxx
- Why do you use XML?
- Prev by Date: Re: DLinq EntityManager StartsWith method
- Next by Date: Re: Slow String operations...
- Previous by thread: Re: Why do you use XML?
- Next by thread: Re: Why do you use XML?
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
