RE: SD1 - Short End Tags

>[Andrew Layman]
>In many of these cases, the
>volume of data is large, but is mainly short fields, so the overhead of
>lengthy tags is pretty high relative to the basic data.
>
Why don't the data people do this instead:-
<database>
<schema>
 <field name = "name"     type = "string" length = "20"/>
 <field name = "shoesize" type = "int"    length = "2"/>
</schema>
<record name = "Sean Mc Grath       " shoesize = "12"/>
<record name = "Mark Uplang         " shoesize = "14"/>
...
</database>

If the field sizes are generally small, attributes might be a better
option than data content and side-steps the need for long delimiter strings.

Each record above costs 55 characters. The element version:-

<record><name>Sean Mc Grath       </name><shoesize>12</shoesize></record>

costs 64 characters

With empty end-tags:-

<record><name>Sean Mc Grath       </><shoesize>12</></>

costs 55 again.

The attribute version costs the same as the end-tag here but is much
more Perl/Python/Grep-able.

Sean
Sean Mc Grath

sean@digitome.com
Digitome Electronic Publishing
http://www.digitome.com

Received on Saturday, 17 May 1997 09:00:10 UTC