>Mukul Gandhi has collected a conversation between Michael Kay (Saxon XSLT/XQuery author), and Roger Costello of XFront.com fame, in which they discuss techniques on XML Processing in applications.
I think most would agree with the following statement by Michael Kay regardless of whether it is XML or not:
…Having two different models of the same data, understanding how they relate, and organizing yourself to keep them in sync is simply complexity that you don’t need.
Much of the time that is spent working with any type of data is converting it from one data binding format to another. Whether that be bring it into an EMF model, an XML DOM, Java or C# object classes, etc. The less time you need to do to keep different models of the same data in synch the better.
>An important factor to consider in this context is that XML itself is a model of something in the real world, and it better be kept in sync with that. Moreover, while XML is quite nice for representing self-contained hierarchical structure, i.e., containment references within one document, it’s far from ideal for representing a network of relations, i.e., non-containment references spanning documents. A good model of what the XML actually means to ensure that one is processing an abstract model rather than mere concrete XML syntax is an important factor in making XML processing actually be model processing.
>Yep..use the correct tool for the correct job. Problem is everybody just dumps to XML when it may not be the correct tool for the job, but the most convenient one.
>Did you have a look at the XRX (XForms-Rest-XQuery) architecture ? Its aim is to limit data representation to XML considering that even the client, because of XForms, can process XML instances.
>@Alain: I’m a big fan of XRX. There are many ways to process and work with XML. Ed is a huge fan of models and in particular the eclipse modeling framework.Personally I like to get it in one model format and do as little conversion between models as possible. If it’s already in XML, I’d prefer to keep it in the XML format so I do not have to convert it.Again, the right tool for the right job. We shouldn’t use XRX unless it fits the job and is the best choice for the situation. In a lot of applications I believe it is, especially when dealing consuming and resending xml formats.
>Considering XHTML is an XML format, every web application should be XRX eligible !