Binary XML

http://news.com.com/Faster+XML+ahead/2100-1007_3-5630957.html?tag=nefd.lede

The Net's top standards body is getting closer to speeding up XML-based software, a move that could benefit everyone from cell phone carriers to television broadcasters to the military.

But critics say the group's favored approach could cause major compatibility problems, among other things.

XML is fast becoming a widely used way of formatting and saving business documents such as purchase orders. But for certain applications--sending data to set-top boxes, for instance, and offering interactive programs on cell phones--representing data using XML is simply too bulky, say proponents for more efficient XML.

4 Comments

  • Or may be they just don't need XML in the first place.

  • Maybe I'm wrong, but personally I see stuff like that as a waste of time. In the amount of time it takes to get something like that going and implemented, then to have it widely used, hardware and internet speeds will have already increased to be able to handle that type of data. Personally, it seems like a waste of resources unless they've got nothing else better to do! :P Besides, isn't XML one of those things where you should use it in the right places? ;)

  • The whole concept of binary XML seems nonsequitur to me. The goal of XML was to be processable by almost anything at almost any time. Binary XML contradicts those goals because it pushes more semantics and more processing requirements into the processing stack to meet a "sometimes needed" thing. It feel we're tasking the parser builders with expeding 90% of the efforts to solve 10% of the uses cases.

  • Binary XML standard? Sheesh.. next you'll have vendors who'll debate about their 'endian-architecture'& encoding differences - sure way of slowing down things.

    I think it's best to let XML evolve itself and have external tools & enhancements improve upon it (eg. Tarari XML processors).

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