Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 20:14:24 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@osd.bsdi.com (Jordan Hubbard) Cc: bright@wintelcom.net, DougB@DougBarton.net, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: configuration files Message-ID: <200103272014.NAA14374@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20010327112538N.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> from "Jordan Hubbard" at Mar 27, 2001 11:25:38 AM
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> > And thus the point of XML is realized...
> > A solution for a problem that doesn't exist. :)
>
> And that's a statement made more for amusement value than a
> representation of actual fact. XML is a solution for a lot of
> problems and it's already been widely deployed on a lot of them. It's
> not XML's fault that people have attempted to use it for things it is
> _not_ well suited for ("when all you have is a hammer...") and whether
> or not it's suitable for the stuff currently under discussion is less
> relevent than whether or not people can agree on ANY representational
> format that isn't exactly the same as what we're using now.
A real problem with XML is that there is very little in the
way of schema standardization out there (the one big exception
is EDI of financial data, which was standardized almost the
day XML came out).
There's also the problem of divorcing object data from any
standardized accessor/mutator functions, which pretty much
damages any reasonable ability to do generalized triggers to
do things like regenerate sendmail.cf files when configuration
data is changed in the configuration base. It's somewhat of
a nasty problem, if you want to do this a minimal number of
times, given a large number of changes whose groupings are
designed by a UI person's idea of what's "logical", rather
than the data entry screens being in third normal form.
For that reason, it's generally much more useful to have a
protocol gating access to your data model, rather than just a
raw data model sitting around somewhere, with no way to demark
transactions into "do these changes atomically, and generate
the new sendmail.cf file only once, please".
What this basically means is that it's great, if you are doing
code that you don't expect to interoperate with anyone elses
code, and less great otherwise.
Or to rip of an old saying "The wonderful thing about XML
schema standards are that there's so many to choose from".
The primary reason I see it being used in places like IBM is
that it can tunnel RPC calls and other data over HTTP, which
people tend to let through firewalls. In other words, it is
capable of routing around anal retentive security types, who
live in deathly fear of FTP and DNS. IMO, XML was practically
invented just to get around IBM network security.
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
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