mark nottingham

XML

JSON or XML: Just Decide

Friday, 13 April 2012

When people create HTTP APIs, one of the common decisions is about what format to use, usually revolving around “JSON or XML?”

Are Namespaces (and mU) Necessary?

Friday, 7 April 2006

It’s become axiomatic in some circles — especially in WS-* land, as well as in many other uses of XML — that the preferred (or only) means of offering extensibility is through URI-based namespaces, along with a flag to tell consumers when an extension needs to be understood (a.k.a. mustUnderstand).

XSLT for the Rest of the Web

Tuesday, 18 October 2005

I’ve raved before about how useful the XSLT document() function is, once you get used to it. However, the stars have to be aligned just so to use it; the Web site can’t use cookies for anything important, and the content you’re interested in has to be available in well-formed XML.

Separating the Data Model from its Serialisation

Wednesday, 10 August 2005

For some time, I’ve noticed that people defining XML formats spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the structure of the format. This is especially apparent in standards working groups, where hours — no, days — can be spent agonizing over whether to make something an attribute or an element.

Getting Rid of QNames in Content

Tuesday, 14 June 2005

Or, What’s Wrong with XInclude?

XML Base: Evil?

Saturday, 21 May 2005

If you accept that QNames in content are evil, the next logical question is whether XML Base is any better. In fact, if you turn your head a certain way, it appears that there’s very little difference between a default namespace and XML Base.

OxygenXML, Now with Visual Schema Editing

Tuesday, 17 May 2005

OxygenXML 6.0 is out, and it sucks even less. The biggest news is — finally! — a visual Schema editor. This may be the biggest threat yet to Gudge’s job security, as Human Schema Editor. :)

Data Modeling and Abstraction

Friday, 29 April 2005

Today’s release of Tiger includes a new but little-discussed framework for developers, CoreData. What’s most interesting to me is its similarities — and differences — to SDO, IBM and BEA’s* effort to abstract away the specifics of how data is stored.

Syntax for Distributed Computing

Sunday, 24 April 2005

XML is arguably one of the bigger things to come onto industry’s radar for a while, and as a result programming languages (e.g., ECMAScript, Comega, Java) are changing to accommodate it. This isn’t just happening in libraries; the syntax of the languages is changing.

Can Somebody Explain to Me...

Friday, 1 April 2005

RDF has a simple, usable, universal model; everything’s nodes and arcs, so it avoids the problems of the Infoset, which IMO are brought by its complexity and special cases. Years of disquiet about attributes by portions of the XML cognoscenti support this view unintentionally, I think.

Using XML in Data-Oriented Applications

Wednesday, 2 March 2005

So, you’ve got some data that you need to give to somebody else, and you want to use XML to do it; good for you, you’ve seen the light / hopped on the bandwagon / drunk the Kool-Aid.

document(Web)

Tuesday, 22 February 2005

I love the XSLT document function. With it, you can access the whole Web from a stylesheet; this gives a lot of flexibility, in the right situation.

JSON and XML

Monday, 24 January 2005

I’m intrigued by the JSON effort. While many people (and vendors) have chosen XML for data interchange because it’s not platform- or vendor-specific, these folks have chosen the other path; by leveraging the serialisation of data structures in ECMAScript (nee JavaScript) — a nearly ubiquitous language, on every desktop that has a browser — they get an automatic installed base and at least one API for free.

XML Language Bindings Done Right

Wednesday, 23 June 2004

John Schneider was in the office last week and gave me a demo of something he’s been working on for a while, E4X — by far one of the coolest technologies I’ve seen in some time. I think that every language is going to want one when they see this stuff.

XML Infoset, RDF and Data Modelling

Friday, 28 May 2004

I’ve been talking with a few people about my previous assertion that the Infoset is a bad abstraction for data modelling, and my subsequent post about the informational properties of the Infoset.

Informational Properties of Infosets

Wednesday, 12 May 2004

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the influences that using the Infoset has on the information you place in it.

OxygenXML is Good Enough

Tuesday, 11 May 2004

I’ve been playing around with the new OxygenXML 4.0 plug-in for Eclipse M8.

Boo!

Wednesday, 5 May 2004

Without pointing fingers, some people have a bee in their collective bonnet about the dangers of allowing binary content to be represented in XML, care of XOP. Others are up in arms about re-inventing HTTP in SOAP, courtesy of the Representation Header. Both of these are products of the XML Protocol WG, of which I’m a member, so I’d like to share my viewpoint (which is not that of either my employer nor the working group, etc., ad nauseam).

xml:id is Coming

Friday, 9 April 2004

This is a good idea for so many reasons. The media type registration will have to be changed to take advantage of it, but I believe that RFC3023 is under review anyway.

The Problem With Infosets

Sunday, 7 March 2004

An interesting issue poked its head up at the W3C Technical Plenary last week. XML Protocol (known as SOAP to mere mortals) is defined in terms of XML Infosets — it describes how to move Infosets around and process them, as the basis of Web services.

XPointer: Friend or Foe?

Saturday, 7 February 2004

One of the uglier corners in the Web architecture is the relationship between fragment ids (the bit of the URI at the end, after the “#”) and content negotiation. In a nutshell, because dereferencing a single URI can return multiple formats, and because the fragID is interpreted by the client based on the format, it’s possible to have a fragID mean wildly different things across representations of a single resource.

XQuery on the Web

Monday, 12 January 2004

There’s a lot of interest out there about exposing XQuery 1.0 / XPath 1.0 / XPath 2.0 in Web interfaces. On the face of it, this is quite a compelling idea; it allows you to reuse a generic query mechanism (goodness) to access arbitrary data based on the client’s needs (more goodness) and only the bits of data that you want go across the wire (yet more goodness).

QNames are Evil

Saturday, 6 December 2003

How’s this analogy:

Hoping for Better XML Editors

Wednesday, 26 November 2003

I’m getting a few requests for clarification and additional information from 3rd party vendors regarding my previous rant on XML editing. With any luck, XML editing will get much more interesting soon…

Why do XML editors suck so much?

Thursday, 2 October 2003

I’m seriously sick of using programs that call themselves “XML editors” because they colourize markup. I’m talking about XML Spy, Oxygen, BBEdit, and thousands of lesser programs. All of them are just glorified text editors - they still operate on the level of characters, not information items.

OxygenXML

Saturday, 14 June 2003

Sean McGrath, Macintouch and others point out OxygenXML, a pretty slick-looking XML editor. Either it’s pretty new and only now coming onto the scene, or I’ve had my head deeper in the sand than is typical.