Article:		Doing it Simpler
Subject:		XML was good when it was simple.
Date:		2001-08-03 05:49:35
From:		Andrew Yohn
Our development shop uses XML as our core technology platform. Because we developed our base prior to XSD, most of our technology uses XDR. In using XDR, we were able to define most of our modeling needs, but alas there were some instances in our data specification that couldn't be expressed well with XSD. So we just dealt with the issue as best we could, delivered product and waited with anticipation for XSD to be released. But when the XSD specification was released, we were overwhelmed with the complexity and all the stuff we did not need. The additional complexity of XSD is another instance of 'we did it because we could' as opposed to something easily understood and used by the masses. XSD is just an example of the complexity being imposed on the XML community that does not need to be there. XML became the industry mantra because it was (intially) so simple and obvious. We must be careful to not do things 'just because we can', let's make sure we should.

Previous Message

Next Message