Overheard in the tech blogosphere » XML

Government tech – President Obama, tear down those walls!

Margaret Rouse — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:06:21 +0000

“When Vivek Kundra became the federal government’s chief information officer, he talked about the value of using standard off-the-shelf computer systems instead of the custom-built ones that government agencies are inclined to buy. With the new government site Data.gov, Mr. Kundra is showing off the value of standard data formats as well.”

Saul Hansell, Data.gov: Unlocking the Federal Filing Cabinets

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). Basically, it’s a framework for ensuring that different government agencies can share information more effectively while still being able to maintain their own proprietary databases.

Much to my amazement, standardized technology in the US government is becoming more than just a wish.

Remember back in 1983 when the United States government invaded Grenada? There’s a famous story about an Army officer in Granada who needed air support and wanted to communicate with a Navy aircraft carrier he could see offshore. The radios that each branch of the military had purchased operated on different frequencies, so the officer ended up using his telephone calling card in a public phone booth to call Fort Bragg, Virginia and get his message relayed to the Navy — who forwarded the request for air coverage to the ship. The story reached the ears of Senator Barry Goldwater and he pushed for the Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (more commonly known as the Goldwater-Nichols Act).

Anyway, it looks like those days of government technology silos are going the way of the Berlin Wall. Data.gov is another step in the right direction.

A primary goal of Data.gov is to “improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., web applications).” Think of it as Government Information Technology 2.0. Thank you, President Obama. Tear down those walls!

From the newly launched Data.gov site:

Data.gov includes searchable catalogs that provide access to “raw” datasets and various tools. In the “raw” data catalog, you may access data in XML, Text/CSV, KML/KMZ, Feeds, XLS, or ESRI Shapefile formats. The catalog of tools links you to sites that include data mining and extraction tools and widgets. Datasets and tools available on Data.gov are searchable by category, agency, keyword, and/or data format.

Overheard: Dave Winer is the Microsoft of XML?

Margaret Rouse — Thu, 01 May 2008 02:25:56 +0000

My point here is that OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) takes a very, very simply nested list definition and then adds random hacks that Dave Winer wanted to use in his applications without thinking of a generic way to define them so that other developers can do something with the format.

In other words, Dave Winer is the Microsoft of XML.

Elliot C. Back, The OPML Embroglio: What is OPML?

This is an old blog post and I’m late to the party, but it still made me laugh out loud.

Overheard: XML is firmly grounded in Web 1.0 publishing

Margaret Rouse — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:56:50 +0000

The crystal ball might be a little hazy, but the outline of XML’s future is becoming clear. The exact time line is a tad uncertain, but where XML is going isn’t. XML’s future lies with the Web, and more specifically with Web publishing…But XML is still firmly grounded in Web 1.0 publishing, and that’s still very important.

Elliotte Rusty Harold The future of XML

In 2008 we will still see a lot of shouting and hollering over which XML vocabulary to use for office documents, and not a few polemics on both sides. I suspect Microsoft will lose its efforts to have OOXML declared an ISO standard in February, but I’m not certain of that. Either way, the writing on the wall is clear. Microsoft Office will continue to lose market share to OpenOffice, iWork, and other competitors.

If the authoring tool will be a traditional office program such as Word or OpenOffice Writer, what will be on the server to hold this? And how will you move the content from the client to the server? This is where two of the most significant 1.0 releases from 2007 come into play: the Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) and XQuery.

Overheard: W3C XML Schemas lack elegance

Margaret Rouse — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:40:46 +0000

W3C XML Schemas (XSD) suck. They are hard to read, hard to write, hard to understand, have interoperability problems, and are unable to describe lots of things you want to do all the time in XML.

Tim Bray, as quoted in Should you be using RELAX-NG?

Tim was co-editor of the XML 1.0 specification and created the first parser software for XML documents. Currently, he is the Director of Web Technologies for Sun Microsystems.

Overheard: Fast Infoset explained

Margaret Rouse — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:16:08 +0000

To effectively improve web service performance, you need to reduce the overhead associated with parsing, serializing, and transmitting XML-based data. Fast Infoset is an open, standards-based solution for doing just that.

Young Yang, Boost Web Service Performance in JAX-WS with Fast Infoset

Overheard: Web 2.0 programming

Margaret Rouse — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:47:31 +0000

“A very important aspect of XProc is that it will be a standard and have multiple (hopefully) interoperable implementations. This should pave the way for an explosion of applications of XML pipelines.”

Erik Bruchez, XML pipelines: XPL and XProc