Is XML Past Its Prime?

December 20, 2006 from Enterprise Open Source Magazine – “Is XML overrated? This is a question not asked lightly. It is a heavy and bloated question, much like XML itself. XML has been around since 1997. It is document based and it is extremely verbose. It requires a higher payload across the network and cannot be natively used once it arrives. The XML payload must be consumed in some fashion. None of these activities attribute to the speed of an application…

XML still thrives on the strength of one key factor: its market penetration. As clunky and obtrusive as it may be, XML is still a highly-used standard for data interchange between disparate systems. Most application servers can accept XML and apply some layer of processing to the XML. EDI is a key driver to not only XML's perpetuation, but its very existence.

JSON ("JavaScript Object Notation") is a format that more and more languages are "learning" to consume. It is, as the name implies, a standard object notation. Logic can be created to consume and serialize this notation into language-specific native datatypes. The only limitation to this would be language-specific object instances which cannot be serialized and de-serialized. If more systems were to use JSON for data interchange, in lieu of XML, the payload would decrease and application performance would increase because the parsing of an XML document still outweighs the de-serialization of a JSON string.

Where does this leave the first question? Is XML overrated? There are compelling arguments on both sides of the aisle, but the answer lies in individual preference. If a developer is more comfortable with XML, it will be used. If they are more comfortable with an alternative data interchange format, that format of preference will be used.

Either way, XML will continue to exist; but its days may, indeed, be numbered.”

180 View – For some of our readers, this article will be too technical and they may be wondering why we included it. The reason is that XML is touted by many people as a panacea to solving integration issues and as the tool that will enable B2B eCommerce to become the way to exchange transactions between organizations. We too could be accused of hyping XML. This article shows the warts of XML, which we think are not fatal. By the way, XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language.