On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 4:46 AM, Alan Gauld <alan.ga...@btinternet.com> wrote: > "David Hutto" <smokefl...@gmail.com> wrote > >>> And from what I recall XML is intended for data transfer in respect to >>> HTML(from a recent brushup, nothing more), >> >> Apologies that is browser based transfer, > > I'm not sure what that last bit means. > XML is a self-describing data format. It is usually used for files > but can be used in data streams or in-memory strings.
I know it's self tagged, meaning you create the tags within, and that it's used elsewhere as a form of data transfer, my previous usage with the particular file format was browser based in usage, but I know it's used in many other places, which is why I didn't see the meaning of the discussion saying it was horrible to use, I just asked for any alternative suggestions for files, since everyone 'seemed' to have a bad view of the usage, since it seems to be the standard for user defined tags for data transfer. > > It's natural competitors are TLV (Tag,Lenth,Value) and > CSV(Comma Seperated Value) files but neither is as rich > in structure. That was kind of my point, I've seen all but TLV in use, but XML is the web standard it seems. Alternative options include ASN.1, Edifact and > IDL but these are not self-describing(*) (although they are all > more compact and faster to parse, but only IDL is free Haven't heard of these, but formula of file, it seems to me, is encoding + extension + text, how much can these really differ. On average it seems that the self defined tags of xml, would have a bigger impact on the average usage(someone has larger tag sizes, and more tags) than a defined file with averaged tags. > >>> sure has been displayed as a data transfer mechanism, > > You don't have to use it for data transfer - eg MS's use > as a document storage format in Office - but frankly if > you use XML to store large volumes of data you are mad, > a database is a much more sensible option being far more > space efficient and faster to work with. If truly optimizing, I would time both, and maybe move to a different language, or pattern if it truly mattered. > > (*)ASN.1, IDL etc all rely on a shared definition, and > often shared code library, at both sender and receiver. > The library is a compiled version of the data definition > which enables complex data structures to be read from > the file in a single chunk very efficiently. This I might have to work on, but I rely on experience to quasi-trust experience. _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
