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Standards as Arbitrary Solutions to Recurring Problems

ACM News Service: Faster XML Ahead.  The drive to introduce an official W3C specification for an easier-to-handle XML encoding may lead to initiation of an XML supplement for use in performance- or space-critical applications.  This raises the problem of introducing more standard in an area where there is one (XML 1.0) already well-established.  One does not want to make a move that creates a problem where one does not exist, and fragmenting the choice of XML encodings is a concern.  This is especially the case where the new specification addresses what might be better served by a niche agreement, and there does seem to be some need for that.  And then the tension arises around needing to emit more than one form, being able to inter-convert, and being able to deal with legacy and repurposing situation.

This blurb simply accounts for the current tension in the XML community, observing that "another concern is that a binary XML standard would not be widely adopted; Rys notes that XML 1.1 has not met expectations and that Microsoft has not yet supported the specification because of backwards-compatibility fears."

The 2005-03-23 Martin LaMonica CNet News.Com article provides comprehensive coverage of the concerns and the forces that are struggling for resolution.  I see the usual tension between diving into the solution space and coughing up direct remedies (go binary, etc.) and taking a serious look at the XML specification life-cycle from a systems perspective.

It seems to me that the demands of stability, consistency, and interoperability are quite high.  The at-hand availability of XML as a format for everything is appealing, but edge-performance cases will always break down no matter what is done to the core specification.

It seems to me that there are ways to assure interoperability by other mechanisms, although they could take more work and they can always be marginalized. The different variant markups of Wikis and Weblog implementations are an example of niche specialization, new variants of which may be simple laziness and lack of homework.  Either way, the existence of variant media and document formats are real and it might be more useful to look at ways to know what the format is and ensure they are well-defined and mappable rather than expect a single popular standard carry the weight of the world.

posted by orcmid at 3/24/2005 08:38:03 AM, rating data by NewsGator Online