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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dybdahl who wrote (52417)	10/30/2000 12:37:39 PM
From: mozek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74651

XML is not just ASCII, but you're right about one thing... While XML does provide incredible data modeling and interop benefits, XML itself can do nothing. Within an application or across communicating applications, XML can do quite a bit. XML uses ASCII encoding to represent a data model capable of containing hierarchical, relational, and semi-structured data. In fact, the ASCII encoding, while providing great interop strength has nothing to do with the data model, which provides elements, attributes, and associated schema. The data model would be just as powerful whether encoded in ASCII, a binary form, EBCDIC, or otherwise. Comma delimited ASCII typically represents fairly simple rows of data. Of course, one can hack and hack to create one-off representations of various data structures and relationships using comma delimited ASCII, but why bother creating something no one will understand when you've already got XML? Right now, XML is pixie dust. You can sprinkle it on an application, and WHAM! You've got a magical solution with perfect interop. While this might work for marketing types, anyone who understands how applications are built knows that things don't work that way. Unfortunately, some very strong technical people are recoiling from this mindset and missing out on understanding the real strengths of XML. At the same time, Microsoft is leading in defining ways that the XML data model and ASCII representation can be leveraged for application interop, advanced data representation, and simplified application development. If you're really interested in understanding XML, look at how it's being used. Look at SOAP, look at Biztalk, look at the XML-Schema work from the W3C, look at how relational data, for example multiple tables with relationships, are represented in XML. Look at and object graphs are represented. Then see for yourself how it compares to comma delimited ASCII. Mike