L' Eomot Inversé (6/7/2012)

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Nice straightforward unambiguous question.

Of course it's about a nonstandard implementation of something designed to query the overhyped and much misused XML format, with which sensible people want as little to do as possible; but it's still an admirably clear and simple question.

L' Eomot Inversé (6/7/2012)

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... with which sensible people want as little to do as possible...

440692 I am just a number (6/8/2012)

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Why?

I only ask because I have just implemented database trigger where DDL events are recorded as XML.
Having never worked with XML before it took me longer to write a view that read the data
and I earmarked this area as the the next subject to learn.

It's getting harder for this old dog to learn new tricks, so I would be interested to hear your reasons

Ian

L' Eomot Inversé (6/8/2012)

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There's nothing wrong with XML in itself, in fact in its place it can be very useful. It's verbose, but that isn't always harmful. It can be inordinately complex (just try mapping stuff where the type system permits multiple inheritance and self reference, and type is itself a type, into XML) but generally isn't when its use is restricted to things it's good at, like being a useful step forwards from SGML. The trouble is that people insist on using it in cases where it both is too verbose to be practical and causes too much complexity because it's a bad match for the subject area. It has been so overhyped and so overused that when I come across it my first reaction is to check whether the particular use is reasnable. More often than not, it isn't and one of the first development problems is to take the XML and convert it into some datastructures that are suitable for purpose. For example XML gets used when minimising data size is an extremely desirable objective, it gets used for passing large numbers of objects all having the same type even in cases where the overhead of parsing a textual format is the limiting factor on system capability, and it gets used in many other circumstances for which it is wholely inappropriate. I probably shouldn't dislike XML for these reasons, but instead dislike the idiots who misuse it and the charlatans who promote it as the best remedy for all ills since snake oil, but I'm only human and people's misuse of (and overhyping of) XML has caused me so much pain.