{"id":21,"date":"2006-05-23T12:27:56","date_gmt":"2006-05-23T16:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kralidis.ca\/blog\/2006\/05\/23\/when-to-use-xml\/"},"modified":"2006-08-16T12:11:14","modified_gmt":"2006-08-16T16:11:14","slug":"when-to-use-xml","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kralidis.ca\/blog\/2006\/05\/23\/when-to-use-xml\/","title":{"rendered":"When to use XML"},"content":{"rendered":"

I remember, in 1998<\/a>, an old boss of mine sending us a presentation on XML<\/a>, and how it was going to become the next big thing in information exchange. Well, things have certainly moved along since then, and XML is all over the place<\/a>.<\/p>\n

XML is great. It’s human readable, application neutral and self-describing. It’s also being used by everyone and their dog for anything possible. While I’m quite the XML zealot (it has done wonders for us in the OGC<\/a> and OSGEO<\/a> communities), my experiences have taught me to use XML judiciously. Sometimes a plain text config file is fine. Sometimes binary encoding is needed (especially for voluminous data).<\/p>\n

I recently reacquianted myself with a web architecture document<\/a> from the W3C<\/a> folks. Section 4.5.1<\/a> provides some sound suggestions of when to apply XML to your application(s). Happy reading!<\/p>\n\n\n