Re: [xml-dev] Status of MicroXML?
Roger,
Web developers will embrace XML when they embrace
the whole package.
Web developers do not object to XML as means
of formatting data, i.e., part (a) of the package.
Web developers do object to the verbose, arcane
validation languages (b) and the verbose, arcane XML
programming language (c). Specifically, Web developers
object to XML Schema and XSLT.
Web developers would embrace the package if XML came
bundled with a concise, common validation language and
a concise, common programming language -- the validation
language and programming language are non-XML syntax.
I would contend that RNC and XQuery may very well be those languages. I've managed to get Java developers up to speed on XQuery within a few days, and while there are some idiosyncrasies associated with XQuery, the language is FAR more intuitive to a Java developer than XSLT is. Similarly, RNC is a compact mechanism for encoding a schema. The reason that there isn't a big uptake in them at this point is partially an education issue - most developers don't understand what XQuery is until they actually sit down and work with it - and partially implementation - there is currently one XQuery implementation in the browser (XQIB, which is cool, but still buggy and not terribly well documented) and XQuery is not yet a part of the standard Java core library, though there are a number of ways of utilizing from third party libraries such as Saxon or DataDirect.