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  Friday, October 08, 2004 

Generalizing E4X

Rand Anderson proposes that Python add "support for a native (or quasi-native) XML datatype, a la E4X". Cool! Of course, Python already takes a few steps in that direction: minidom, xmltramp. Likewise Ruby, PHP, and I'm sure many others.

Whenever I see the emergence of per-programming-language variations on a theme, I wonder what can be abstracted. In this case, I wonder about the feasibility -- and the desirability -- of pushing the notion of a native XML datatype down into the JVM and CLR/Mono. In theory, the benefits would be:

  • A single robust implementation
  • Smoother transfer of experience across programming-language domains
  • A common focus for storage implementations

The last point may be the most compelling. For example, E4X uses XMLBeans to map the XML type system to Java. So if you wanted to use XML-savvy databases to back E4X objects, XMLBeans would be the interface you'd target. But that presumes Java. Could a language-independent type mapping be a common connector between a family of managed languages and a set of compliant databases? I'm speculating wildly of course, but it's an intriguing notion.

 


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