Hi Perrin!
Thanks a lot for the excellent answer! I understood that my
question was offtopic (I'm sorry) and very common, but I wanted
to hear a Perl developer's postion. Well, I got it. Thanks. :-)
--
Best regards,
******************************************************
Vlad A. Safronov [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Perrin Harkins wrote:
>
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Vlad Safronov wrote:
> > What's the benefits of using XML in building web site with dynamic
> > content?
> > (web site is a front end to database)
>
> This is off-topic for this list, but I can't resist...
>
> What's the benefit of using XML? You get to buy expensive application
> servers! No, that can't be it... You get to buy a bunch of books on XML!
> No, that doesn't sound right either... It's an excuse to learn Java! No,
> somebody went and wrote a Perl parser... It's a way to store structured
> information like a database system, but without all that pesky concurrent
> access management and query capability! No, there must be something...
>
> Well, it's from Microsoft, so it must be great! Right?
>
> Okay, I admit there are places where XML is useful. Any place you used to
> say "comma separated values" can be s/// with XML and improve the
> readability of your data. It makes nice-looking config files too. It's
> very handy when you need a format for passing complex data in an OS and
> language independent way. It's also handy when you don't know what your
> data structure will be before you start, so you can't make a real database
> schema for it. Witness the folks at http://www.allaire.com/ who built an
> entire product (Spectra) around serializing objects in a single field as
> XML. Of course, if you only need to manipulate data using perl, you could
> just serialize with Storable and save some space/cycles. It can also be
> used when you want to store some structured data but you can't run a real
> database for some reason. It definitely beats making up your own addition
> to the million or so text-based data formats out there.
>
> Some people like to pull data from a database, turn it into XML as an
> intermediary format, and then use something like XSLT to turn it into
> HTML. Personally, I don't see a good reason to do this instead of
> just using perl's internal data strutcures for your intermediary
> format and using something like Template Toolkit (see CPAN) to format
> it into HTML. But, it's a matter of taste, and also of portability to
> other languages.
>
> Looks I came up with some reasons after all. So go ahead and use it if
> you see a fit. Just don't believe anything that a person with a product
> to sell tells you about XML. Or anything else. But that's a different
> story.
>
> - Perrin
