XML 2005: Tipping Sacred Cows
by Micah Dubinko
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Pages: 1, 2
Pipelines and Functional XML
More food for thought. Any conversation involving, say, XSLT and XInclude will probably lead to discussion on the need for an XML processing model and the lack of ordering that afflicts current solutions. The W3C has entertained various proposals for pipeline languages, on what Henry Thompson calls the ODTAO model: One Damn Thing After Another. Henry's Thursday talk Functional XML: A New Approach to XML Processing breaks from tradition. The key observation is that many kinds of XML processing can be expressed like a mathematical function, with an output infoset expressed in terms of an input infoset. These functions can be combined in various ways, using functional techniques that are likely familiar to any XSLT programmer, whether or not they recognize them as "functional programming."
A completely different facet of application pipelines came from Amazon and Steve Rabuchin's Wednesday talk Opening Up: Sharing Data and Technology as a Growth Strategy. In general terms, he talked about the value of customers doing things with Amazon data and technology that they themselves wouldn't have thought of. Primarily, though, the talk was about Amazon Mechanical Turk, named after a famous hoax. It's what they call "artificial artificial intelligence," that is, applying the intelligence of real humans to computing tasks, via web services. The implications of this technology and the resulting marketplace are only just beginning to be understood.
A few other talks fell into the interesting-but-otherwise-hard-to-categorize category. Lotfi Belkhir's Tuesday talk XML Marks the Spot: XML Helps Move Knowledge from Books to Bytes was a product presentation on a book scanner. The technology uses gentle vacuum grippers to turn pages, while high-resolution cameras take images. The system overall is gentler than human hands, and targeted at institutions like the Open Content Alliance that are working through a backlog of bringing 500 years' worth of books into the digital age. Incidentally, the system uses XML throughout, for both configuration and job files, and as a possible output format.
Finally, another presentation that left people thinking was Sam Ruby's Thursday talk "Just" Use XML. He outlined commonly occurring problems in XML, as uncovered through interoperability testing he played a part in. The format was a rapid-fire listing of pitfalls, peppered with vigorous audience feedback.
Things Overheard
Keeping with established tradition, this article will close with some things overheard at the conference:
"It may crash, but I can get it going again pretty quick."
"If the tools we use are too complicated, then they become part of the problem."
"So, where do the zombies come in?"
"I assume it's because he is an android."
"OWLs have relationships."
"Is anyone here from (company name censored)? No? Good, that gives me license to be a little more . . . factual."
"You still owe me a definition of exactness."
"Comprehensive understanding remains a looong waaay off."
"So of course it didn't work, right?"
"Anything done by a committee will have action items."
(Speaker to a fellow employee in the audience) "He's doing bad things!"
(From a vendor on the exhibit floor) "You look like you haven't had any sleep."
(In response to calls of "increase your font size, please") "Everybody wants to be an art director."
On a personal note, congratulations to this year's XML Cup winners, Mike Kay and Norm Walsh. Lauren Wood announced that she'll be retiring as chair of the XML 200x conference series, and she'll be missed. David Megginson, who gave an excellent closing keynote, will chair XML 2006.
- Like The Man Said
2005-11-23 17:31:11 GradyH
