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Announce: Pyxie - an Open Source XML Processing Library for Python

Paul Prescod paul at prescod.net
Sat Dec 18 13:54:10 EST 1999 
Robin Becker wrote:
> 
> Can someone explain in simple terms what the real advantages of XML as
> an intermediate language are?

XML has the following virtues:

technical:

 * it is text, and therefore hackable
 * it is relatively convenient for both document data and machine to
machine data
 * it has a well-defined schema language (the DTD)

practical:
 * various interesting technologies build upon it
 * it is a W3C and ISO standard
 * it is implemented in almost every programming language on almost
every platform

In perhaps a week we could come up with another language with all of the
technical features (especially given that we could build on our
understanding of XML) but the practical advantages are not likely to go
away soon. And we adopt standards more for their practical advantages
than for the technical one.

> I'm also a bit suspicious of something which M$ seems really
> enthusiastic about.

M$ is enthusiastic about it because they need to do web-based data
interchange and programmers were not buying into their binary-based
schemes. M$ would be enthusiastic about Java for similar reasons
(web-based code distribution) if it were not controlled by one of their
mortal enemies.

I honestly believe that Microsoft must play a different game now that
the world of interconnected computers has gone so far out of their
control. In the Internet market they are just another vendor and
standards compliance has marketing benefit just as it would for Digital
Creations or Sybase.

-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for himself
Three things never trust in: That's the vendor's final bill
The promises your boss makes, and the customer's good will 
http://www.geezjan.org/humor/computers/threes.html
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