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Does the World Need Binary XML?

Posted by michael on from the using-gzip-would-be-too-easy dept.

sebFlyte writes "One of XML's founders says 'If I were world dictator, I'd put a kibosh on binary XML' in this interesting look at what can be done to make XML better, faster and stronger."

2 of 481 comments (clear)

  1. ZIP ?! by Bazouel · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Why not simply zip it ?

    As far as I know, there are programs/library for that format on every platform ...

    --
    Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
  2. The world does not need binary XML by sys49152 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Here's why:

    1. As noted in the article, there are other ways of solving the problem:
    a. XML parsing by ASICs in dedicated XML processing hardware.
    b. Moore's Law.

    2. XML is successful specifically because it's text based and a standard. Just as compiled languages are slower than assembly, and managed code is slower than compiled code, the benefits of text based information is worth the cost.

    3. I'm not sure the problem even exists. I've spent the last 3 years specializing in SOAP Web Services, and you know what? None of my (very big) clients actually has a problem with too much XML on the network. They just anticipate having this problem in the future; see point 1.

    4. This one's a stretch, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it yet, but... If a system is self-contained, even if distributed, then I don't see the value in using XML for communicating between processes. You might as well use the native RPC mechanism, such as RMI for Java apps. If a system is not self-contained, then XML should be used for just the interfaces exposed to the outside world. Internal communication should remain native. In other words, a lot of XML on the network is completely unnecessary.