From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Mar 27 12:14:39 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from smtp10.phx.gblx.net (smtp10.phx.gblx.net [206.165.6.140]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7F7F637B719 for ; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 12:14:36 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert@usr05.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp10.phx.gblx.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA12980; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:14:34 -0700 Received: from usr05.primenet.com(206.165.6.205) via SMTP by smtp10.phx.gblx.net, id smtpdp3A0qa; Tue Mar 27 13:14:27 2001 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr05.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id NAA14374; Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:14:25 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <200103272014.NAA14374@usr05.primenet.com> Subject: Re: configuration files To: jkh@osd.bsdi.com (Jordan Hubbard) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 20:14:24 +0000 (GMT) Cc: bright@wintelcom.net, DougB@DougBarton.net, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <20010327112538N.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> from "Jordan Hubbard" at Mar 27, 2001 11:25:38 AM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL2] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > 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. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message