Re: A good argument for XML

Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> The problem has been solved before. XML is solving old problems.

What was the solution for mixed content then? There are many people that would argue that SGML was no solution at all because the document structure was not explicit enough on its own to imply any form of validity or well-formedness, thus a DTD was required with every parse. XML, in that sense was a step in the right direction, especially considering that the infrastructure of the web was already built on top of SGML, which for the most part, looks like XML.

> And just because you can come up with an alternative does not
> make that alternative the end-all and be-all. That is the way the XML
> pushers push though.

I've seen the same arguments from people like Fabian Pascal... that somehow the relational model, which was an alternative to previous models, is the end all be all. Fact is that XML zealots admit that XML is not the end all be all for data representation, and they often design systems that are hybrids between relational storage and XML representation/storage, leaving each respective system to doing what they do best. You don't often find that type of opional flexibility in relational zealots.

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