Re: XML and RDBMS/OODBMS

From: Peter Flynn <peter_at_silmaril.ie>
Date: Sun, 11 May 2003 22:47:34 +0100
Message-ID: <b9mctb$k81um$1@ID-163087.news.dfncis.de>

karl wettin wrote:
> On Tue, 6 May 2003 18:56:19 +0000 (UTC)
> "Mirch Masala" <9rowzn01i_at_9rowzn01i.com> wrote:
>
>

>>>For serious business processing, I still think the older EDI stuff
>>>works better for performance and efficiency.
>>
>>Wasn't the problem with EDI that it was too complex and was never widely
>>adopted :-?

>
>
> EDI isn't complex. Actually, it's quite simple. And it has been totaly
> adopted by the logistics-, bank- and the telecom-industry, how now are
> moving on to XML.
>
> EDI has two major flaws: fixed maximum attribute size and the
> impossible task of reverse engineering a message.

And a third: massively expensive to implement (therefore useless for normal businesses). And a fourth: a non-extensible format which needed specialist software to read and interpret.

Probably one of the poorest pieces of message-format design ever invented. But its one big plus point was it was very compact, which was very important when communications were 300bps or less, and still is if you have huge volumes.

> Unless you need to process hundreds of messages each second, use XML. In
> the end it will save you and your customers lots of pain. Escpecilly while
> debugging the application.

Excellent advice.

///Peter Received on Sun May 11 2003 - 16:47:34 CDT