

New XML Standard for Super-Fast, Lightweight Applications Announced by W3C - thankuz
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_xml_standard_for_super-fast_lightweight_applic.php

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kkowalczyk
My take: too little and way too late. Don't even pay attention or else you'll
waste your time.

About 8 years ago I did my small part in expanding XML capabilities of SQL
Server. At the time XML was hot so Oracle, Microsoft, IBM raced to add native
XML handling to their databases. It was going to be the next big thing.
Possibly even bigger than big.

XML was really hot then and many other sins were committed in its name (e.g.
SOAP).

Trust me, the ridiculous inefficiency of XML wasn't lost on developers working
on XML technologies 8 years ago. Coming up with a more efficient binary XML
format is easy. Microsoft had its version (if not several of them) and other
companies had theirs.

The real problem was: politics prevented people agreeing on a standard so no
standard emerged.

There was an eruption of creating standards based on XML (SOAP, XML Schema,
XQuery). If you don't know what those terms mean it's because they all failed
(despite the fact that everyone was convinced they're going to be the next big
thing).

In hindsight it was a terrible mistake to work on those technologies but not
solve a real problem people had then: an efficient, binary XML format.

If W3C did it 8 years ago, maybe it would have been worthwhile and people
wouldn't feel the need to invent Protocol Buffers or Thrift.

But solving this problem today is almost comically late. It has no chance of
adoption.

------
thankuz
From W3C:

"Efficient XML Interchange, or EXI, is described as a very compact
representation of information in XML (extensible markup language). EXI is so
efficient that the W3C says it has been found to improve up to 100-fold the
performance, network efficiency and power consumption of applications that use
XML, including but not limited to consumer mobile apps. It is particularly
useful on devices with low memory or low bandwidth."

Link: <http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/REC-exi-20110310/>

~~~
obtino
It's still XML. Albeit with compression.

I'd rather use Google Protocol Buffers.

