Re: The politics of finding errors Was:XML

In message <GsydnV_UCto7h-7cRVn-uQ_at_comcast.com>, Laconic2 <laconic2_at_comcast.net> writes
>I'll leave the question of HOW XML settled arguments "at a stroke" to the
>person who made that claim.
>
>My only point was that, provided it truly did that, it added a large amount
>of value.

That was my original claim. The industry had several "standard" data interchange formats, but there was no single authoritative description of the formats. I could have tried to nail down an existing standard, but each of the companies would have argued for their own particular variant. And in any case a lot of the data files were hand-edited and didn't comply with whatever standards were supposedly being used.

A single XML format had a number of effects. Although it didn't solve data quality problems those had been quite rare, the main problem we faced were formatting. Each company wasted approximately half a skilled person just reformatting data files. One of my best developers left because he was tired of spending his time reformatting files rather than what he was supposedly paid for.

Another benefit to my company was that it established itself as custodian of the schemas, consolidating its position as the centre of the industry's IT research.

-- 
Bernard Peek
London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author. Will work for money.