Re: binaryXML, marshalling, and and trust boundaries

On Mon, 2002-12-02 at 19:26, Champion, Mike wrote:
> Dan Connolly writes:
> > B: well, what you do in the privacy of
> > your own home/trusted-net is your business.
> > If this isn't about interoperability
> > between arbitrary parties in the net/web,
> > then you really don't need our endorsement,
> > do you?
> 
> 
> Hmm, it seems that standards are more than just about interoperability
> and "endorsement."  A big part of XML's success is simply from the network
> effect of lots of people "agreeing" to stop reinventing the
> grammar/syntax/parser wheel with every application.  So, there's something
> to be said for standardizing on one or more alternative syntaxes for the XML
> infoset that would meet the needs of specialized communities so they don't
> all have to reinvent the "efficient XML serialization format" wheel.  XML is
> big enough now that this would not fragment it into non-interoperating
> communities (after all, many XML tools operateat the Infoset level anyway).

I for one would appreciate it. There are several protocols I've been
working with that, due to their particular nature, would benefit from an
efficient serialization that was very specifically _not_ 'just gzip'.
The model we're working with requires the impact to the server to be
very low as well since the cost to recover is higher than the cost to
requery. If gzip is used then that relationship flipflops and the impact
to the entire system is extremely significant. Thus the reason why we
keep coming back to WBXML as the solution.

And we are talking about a usage where the point is interoperability and
there will be protocol exchanges across trust boundaries.

> I see a number of advantages for having a menu of standardized serialization
> formats rather than insisting that one size fits all.  One might be
> optimized for simple authoring, a la WikiML.  Another might be optimized for
> fast parsing, something on the order of serialized SAX events.  Another
> might be optimized for bandwidth, a la WAP/WML "done right", in light of
> what people learned from that experience (if indeed something other than
> gzipped XML 1.0 is what they need, I don't know).

Could someone point me to a discussion for what was/is wrong with WBXML
beyond the "we just don't think you need it in the first place"
statements? If we were to use it, what would be the real impacts? Is it
non-compliant in important areas? What's the real issue with it?
Because beyond it I haven't found a solution that fits better than
that...

-MM

Received on Monday, 2 December 2002 19:50:06 UTC