Patrick Cooney's Weblog

Binary XML

2005-03-25

XML is a hot topic at the moment: W3C Technical Plenary: The Future of XML, Faster XML ahead? (CNET)

As an end user, I've got a slightly different take on binary XML. Infoset has always felt a little odd to me - on one hand, it adds some respectability to the XML data model, but it also opens up the possibility of other representations. This is a dead end, because it discounts the reason that XML has been wildly successful. It's a lot more than the data model. It's the simple, plain text format that anyone can write a parser for, eyeball, hand-craft and understand. This means that when I have to interoperate with someone using different technology and tools, in a different location and different company, XML is a great lowest common denominator. This goes beyond technical loose coupling - it's more like loose coupling of people and capabilities.

If the focus is shifting to XML on mobile devices and the need for speedier XML in embedded apps (cnet examples), the discussion is really about a whole new thing - use within a more controlled domain, with much less emphasis on the lowest common denominator advantages. Do we need a standard for this?

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