Russell

I run the IT of a large International Courier group - offices in the UK, USA and Germany and agents all over the world - we are sent information in every conceivable format from attachments to email body of text etc - we have to parse them and so far I've managed to dig the message out of almost everything I've been sent so I guess my reason for this post was to try and figure out what XML is going to do for me that I can't already do - we are using Blackberries to send info directly into our systems - it took me 1 day to write the receiving software - we send infomation around the world and it gets there - we are sent info from every corner of the world and we get it - so how am I going to benefit?

A Client recently said that XML would be the most commonly used format for intercganging data within 3 years - they made that sort of claim about COBOL but it turned out to be slow and bloated - what's your take on this claim?

Thanks

Colin

>I use XML some, but don't have a big call for it right now. I think, like lots of technology, it's over-hyped. Yes, it does have advantages and is used a good bit, but some people act like it's the be-all and end-all data format. That's just not true. Also, they always seem to forget to tell you that you can't just automatically parse and use the XML you get. You can get some screwed up XML at times! The tools in VFP can't process all XML and there's really no tool that I know of that can just figure out any old XML someone wants to send. I've got one client that sends some really screwed up XML (coming out of .NET) that is badly structured and contains a bunch of stuff that is unnecessary, but they don't care because it's XML. Anybody should be able to process that, right? Well I do process it, but they make it unnecessarily painful. Like everything else, it takes some effort to do it right, and like everything else there are plenty of people who don't make the effort. The
>problem is that they can get away with it more in XML because it's "universal" and it's text (meaning there's no intrinsic structure) and it has this magic aura around it where people assume that just because it's XML it should be no problem to parse it. I'll keep using it, probably more and more, but I do get tired of the "once it's in XML, anybody should be able to parse it with no problem" attitude that some people have.
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>Russell Campbell
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>>Ok
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>>I put my hands up and say that whilst I know little about the subject I have heard a lot about XML and listened to some of its proponents saying great things about it
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>>So my curiousity at this stage is to learn what VFP developers are using it for ie what sort of applications are they building which are using XML and what benefits they see from using XML over more traditional techniques
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>>Any information would be greatly welcomed
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>>Thanks
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>>Colin Northway