Log-in | Register Username:   Password:   forgot password? Logged in as | Log-out

blog home blog structured search InfoWorld power search InfoWorld metadata explorer The Screening Room all screencasts popular / general-interest screencasts Friday podcasts Friday podcasts with transcripts Friday podcasts: RSS feed all podcasts all blog items LibraryLookup subscribe with rss: send Jon an email: reading list as opml reading list as html

<<  Tuesday, March 18, 2003  >> Secrets of the XML gods text, code, data It's the season for confession. First Tim Bray reveals a dirty secret: "a lot of input data these days is XML...in most cases, I use the perl regexp engine to read and process it." Then Sean McGrath fesses up to his Python habit: "I know I should be invoking a WF [well-formed] parser on the content.xml string but gee Ma, I've got work to do." Text is code, code is data, data is text. Around and around we go. If the XML gods are resorting to Perl and Python hackery to shred documents, are we just spinning our wheels? I don't think so. But this is, perhaps, an unusual case. Normally, as we climb the ladder of abstraction, we are happy to lose sight of the rungs below. I cannot usefully manipulate the blocks and sectors of my disk, or the assembly code my software compiles down to. I can, however, make excellent use of the text stream underlying XML abstractions. So, which way to regard a document becomes a kind of Necker cube puzzle. The bad news: it's confusing. The good news: it's useful.

Recent Entries Why can't Johnny download? Because he's stuck in a semantic muddle. Justifying the feel-good labels Screen-sharing's long tail Why can't Johnny download? A conversation with Rajiv Gupta about fine-grained access control XBRL use cases: better late than never Tantalizing hints of the Knowledge Navigator Denise Getts wires the web Beyond the election news cycle A conversation with Jim Russell about the Pittsburgh diaspora The SALT talks All roads lead to VNC Mobile speech recognition The Screening Room #10: Dabble DB Scaling the Tufte effect A conversation with John Schneider about Efficient XML What's the video threshold for face-reading? So many social networks, so little time Conversational dynamics in the blogosphere Intense, simple, active demonstrations A conversation with Cricket Liu about the Domain Name System Drowning in a rising tide DRM by asking nicely In search of non-gratuitous 3D A conversation with Mark Ericson about communications-enabled business processes Levelator! Talk to the avatar WordPress for loosely-coupled comments, part 2 Compound documents for the web A conversation with Ellen Ullman about living close to the machine At the Paris SOA Forum ID card anthropology Second Life, MTurk, and on-demand education The Screening Room #9: Windows Live Writer A conversation with Tim Fahlberg about mathcasts, clickers, and the future of education A conversation with Jeff Bezos about Amazon web services Kim Cameron on why business protocols aren't user-centric yet Show me my account activity! WordPress as a loosely-coupled comment engine How translucency could defuse the Turnitin/McLean High controversy A conversation with Cyril Houri about annotating the planet using a GPS/WiFi/cellular hybrid Turk work Screencasting of tacit knowledge Ongoing discussion of translucency and selective disclosure Half-baked ideas Google Earth live and in realtime The politics of data control Audio editing on the move A conversation with Phil Windley about identity in the real and virtual worlds

Sponsored Technology Links
Sybase iAnywhere - IT Guide: Mobile Device Management for Dummies?? CA - Efficient - Flexible - Compliant PGP - Is Your Data Safe? Novell, IBM, and Intel - Solution for Open Virtualization Provides Server Consolidation Curl - IT Guide: Rich Internet Application (RIA) Security HP/Intel - If you don't have enough I/O, your VMs aren't going to go. Symantec - Whitepaper: Secure, recover, and archive critical information Microsoft - {Open Source} Heroes Happen Here Symantec - Whitepaper: Protecting Microsoft(R) Applications Riverbed - Five Ugly Truths about WAFS and Caching InterSystems - Use Ensemble - quickly create composite applications. AT&T - Factors to consider when comparing DSL or Cable Cirba - Advanced Workload Analysis Techniques Rackspace - Go Green Without Sacrificing Server Performance CA - Manage your IT more effectively. AT&T - Measuring mobile productivity AT&T - Thinking about IMS CA - Plan IT better, Manage IT better. AT&T - Refine your company's plan for a Business Disruption Event AT&T - Going mobile with today's technology Cirba - Consolidating Workloads onto Mainframes AT&T - What to expect from a Technology Assessment.		AT&T - Class of Service: Myths and Misconceptions AT&T - Enhancing security through Quantum Cryptography Riverbed - Wide Area Data Services Microsoft - Microsoft Forefront makes defending your systems easier. Learn how. HP - Explore the interactive whitepaper: Rightsizing Blades for the mid-market. Symantec - Webcast: Beyond AntiVirus AMD - Renowned Engineering Institution Chooses AMD Processor-Based Servers AMD - Watch this flash demo of the Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processor EMC - EMC and VMware help you build your virtualized infrastructure. AMD - HP and Oracle deploy unbreakable computing infrastructure Qwest - Learn how Qwest voice and data solutions can save you time. MKS - The Power of UNIX/Linux on Windows with MKS Toolkit Vision Solutions - Is your smaller organization ready for High Availability? Vision Solutions - Is system maintenance doing more harm than good? HP - NEW HP LaserJet P4014n printer Starting at $699 after $100 IS. HP - HP LaserJet M3035 MFP series Starting at $1,599. SHOP NOW HP - Speed, agility, flexibility - The HP BladeSystem c-Class. Vkernel - Resolve Capacity Bottlenecks and Enhance Your Virtual Environment Nokia - Restore Your Mobile Devices With One Click Oracle - The Power of Two with SOA and BPM

	HOME  NEWS  BLOGS  PODCASTS  VIDEOS  TECHNOLOGIES  TEST CENTER  EVENTS  CAREERS	About | Advertise | Awards | RSS | Contact Us
Copyright © 2008, Reprints, Permissions, Licensing, IDG Network, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service. All Rights reserved. InfoWorld is a leading publisher of technology information and product reviews on topics including viruses, phishing, worms, firewalls, security, servers, storage, networking, wireless, databases, and web services. CIO :: ComputerWorld :: CSO :: Demo :: GamePro :: Games.net :: IDG Connect :: IDG World Expo Industry Standard :: IT World :: JavaWorld :: LinuxWorld :: MacUser :: Macworld :: Network World :: PC World :: Playlist