Why self describing data formats:

[Will Morton]

James A. Donald wrote:
<snip>
> 
> In the case of XML, yes there is a parsing engine, and if the structure 
> of the DTD reflects the structure of the algorithm, then indeed it makes 
> things much easier.  But usually the committee have not thought about 
> the algorithm, or have unresolved disagreements about what the algorithm 
> should be, leaving the engineer with problems that are at best extremely 
> difficult to solve, and are at worst impossible to solve.  Ideally the 
> DTD should be developed in parallel with the program that processes the 
> XML.  In that case, you get the parsing engine doing a lot of work for 
> free, so the engineers do not have to reinvent the wheel.  But if the 
> DTD is written first by one group, and the program second, by another 
> group, the second group is usually hosed good.
> 

The situation is improved slightly with XML schemas, as one can use 
frameworks like XMLBeans (http://xmlbeans.apache.org/) to get the 
protocol much closer to the code.  This can help a bit, but doesn't 
change the fundamentals.

You're still right in that if you have one group developing the code and 
another the protocol, you're probably screwed, but isn't this just as 
true (perhaps moreso) if you're rolling your own protocol structure 
instead of using XML?

W

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com