Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>
> XML with some agreed-upon vocabularies and possibly a sprinkling of
> identity control and mixed content would get us out of this MARC
> pickle sooner than *anything* else. I'm baffled as to why no one seems
> to argue this way or see it. It's obvious, and right there in front of
> you.
I'm baffled nobody's _done_ it yet.
So go ahead and _show_ the world at least a prototype that would make
it obvious beyond reasonable doubt that XML is what you claim it is.
Or preferably a working model that handles some volume of data
and traffic like 10% of OCLC's, for a start. I do _also_ wonder why,
if it is so gorgeous, nobody has friggin' _done_ the obvious thing yet,
for XML has been around for a while now.
Alex, it looks like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so grab it and run!
But seriously, I'm still convinced that XML as such is little more than
a punctuation standard. Only with massive amounts of tricky additional
resources can you create something with a bit of content awareness.
Here's the "Big Picture": http://kensall.com/big-picture/bigpix22.html
Well, not all of it is essential, but a lot. Think of all the tools
involved, and that you have to have the proper versions of everything
all the time...
You might want to look here as well:
http://xmlsucks.org/but_you_have_to_use_it_anyway/does-xml-suck.pdf
It's not really enchanting. Can it be that we end up with XML solutions
with a sum total of more complexity than MARC solutions? And for the
same reason: everybody does it.
More soberly, there must have been a number of attempts meanwhile at
doing the obvious with XML. Where are the successes? Where are, more
importantly, the failures - we are eager to learn from these! It is,
however, the fate of failures to get covered up rather than reported.
If we want to give the world simple solutions, then a JSON-based
model might also do a good job at lots less of the cost.
(JSON - the fat-free alternative: http://www.json.org/xml.html )
There are more alternatives, but for these, too, I wonder why no-one
has come up with an approach to relieve our calamity.
B.Eversberg
Received on Mon Aug 25 2008 - 08:11:44 EDT