Re: To get things started.... Data formats..

[Michael Joya <mike.joya@xmlglobal.com>]

David Lyon wrote to Betty Harvey:

> I appreciate where you're coming from from a technical perspective.
> Basically you're advocating using a layered approach to building software
> whereby present/future ebXML software must be built upon all the layers of
> specifications that are available from organisations as W3C and so forth.
> I'm familiar with the argument, and on the surface it seems reasonable
> enough.
 
  It's also a tried and tested method for designing any software, where you have contractual agreements between the layers so that no layer tries to "fix problems" in other layers.

> So why not fix the problem ?
> Why perpetuate it forever more ?
> Why can't ebXML be better than previous attempts at XML ?

  I think you're confused about the nature of ebXML. ebXML isn't a new breed or derivative of XML. ebXML does not mandate the creation of a new way to structure data. 
 
> In fact, from a software engineering what you are saying about parsers and
> '$' symbols is fundimentally incorrect.
> You need to restudy how parsers work and what they are able to do.

  What Betty says about parsers is correct. I tried parsing your XML with a standard w3c DOM parser and it recognized the syntax as invalid.

> Parsers are actually fed lexical rules which are an 'input'. The '$'
> character is treated no differently than other characters. If you provide
> the correct lexical rules, any sort of structured text can be 'parsed'. Your
> statements are therefore a complete misrepresentation of the capabilities of
> 'parser' software.

  That's wrong. I never tell my SAX or DOM parser what characters delimit a tag or attribute. These are dictated by the W3C XML specification and are globally agreed upon by all compliant DOM parsers.

> Overall, what you are advocating is software that is so complex and
> inefficient that it hardly even works. Demonstrated by the fact that if you
> give it a '$' symbol then it gets "confused".

  There is a difference between "confused" and "recognized as invalid". Why is this inefficient? Where is the bottleneck? I don't see one.

> ebXML needs to move away from these flaky software engineering approaches
> that you talk about and focus on reliability, security and traceability.
> Otherwise most companies will stay with their fax machines or their EDI
> systems.
> 
> At least a fax machine doesn't get confused if you accidently write a dollar
> symbol on the page!

...and your fax machine is one of thousands of brands and models of different fax machines. Some of these will interpret that dollar sign as invalid. Ohers will ignore it. By contrast, XML provides a far more consistent means of determining the validity of a document.
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