> It seems like a > great tool, but I am trying to figure out why I would actually use it? All > it does is seperate content and data, albeit on the client
Not necessarily only on the client, but on the server side as well. > It would just add > another layer of content/data seperation that would have to processed on the > other end. And that is the heart of the matter. That additional layer as you have so correctly put it allows you to take the data structure you have defined in your XML document and port it into any other system. Let's say that you define a data structure in XML that is being parsed in PHP... maybe at some point you need it to work in a PERL application as well. By conventional means if you needed to update your data specifications you'd need to update it and integrate that into both your PHP and PERL applications. This means you are duplicating the work effort for each platform you support. If you have an XML spec defined for your data structure (and content) then all you need to do is update the XML document and it *should* work seamlessly in both applications. I say should work seamlessly, as you *may* need to write additional API's in your platforms to support the changes you've made in your XML spec. That really depends on what changes you make to you XML spec. As you have already touched on, there is an additional overhead, as one would have to write an API layer that will parse the XML for each platform application that they support. The nice thing is that there is a building base of XML specifications for a number of data structures, as well as a growing base of existing API's that will parse those specs... so if you are lucky you may not need to build the XML structure and API's to run your spec. ck -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
