have you ever heard of tree trauma, infoset ignorance, model myopia, or RDF rage? if not, and you are interested in these and other XML-related ailments, you might want to read about XML fevers:
The Extensible Markup Language (XML), which just celebrated its 10th birthday, is one of the big success stories of the Web. Apart from basic Web technologies (URIs, HTTP, and HTML) and the advanced scripting driving the Web 2.0 wave, XML is by far the most successful and ubiquitous Web technology. With great power, however, comes great responsibility, so while XML’s success is well earned as the first truly universal standard for structured data, it must now deal with numerous problems that have grown up around it. These are not entirely the fault of XML itself, but instead can be attributed to exaggerated claims and ideas of what XML is and what it can do.
if you are using XML or think about using XML or work with people who are using XML or think about working with people who are using XML, you might be interested in our XML Fever
article in the current issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM). here are your options:
- ACM digital library (HTML & PDF)
- CACM online version (some online reading application)
- preprint version (HTML only)
the official citation for this article is Erik Wilde and Robert J. Glushko. XML Fever. Communications of the ACM, 51(7):40-46, July 2008.
I was rather impressed by the content of the article. There are a couple of ailments that I see people suffering with:
One is the delusion that because a web browser can present their document's structure, their document must therefore be well structured!
The other being, that because their choice of element/attribute names match their intended purpose, the XML must therefore be self explanatory.
I'll have to re-read the article to see what headings they come under in the article. I think that 'XML Fever' ought to become required reading.