I only have occasional need to deal with XML at present so might well be an unwitting Bozo. But many of these rules expressed as Donāts leave questions begging. For example, #5 if you donāt use an XML parser what do you use?
I on the other hand love xslt :). Iāve yet to run into a problem that requires an impractical solution. And with grouping, regexp and all the goodies of xpath 2.0 itās even easier to use.
I have rule nr. 1 taped on the wall behind my desk. Whenever someone comes in with an xml-related issue I simply point to the poster. This is usually all it takes :).
Talking of bozos, #17: Can we find the person who came up with the term āastral planeā and beat them to death with their own dungeons and dragons books? Please?
When I first joined this organisation that used an XML database called Tamino that then used XSL files to create webpages, along with the help of some Java.
The whole system was massive, complex and bloody slow.
I re-developed the whole thing using SQL Server 2000 and asp.net pages. It uses a fraction of the size, runs much faster and its very easy to make changes, unlike the XSL system :yuck:
And of course he recommendsā¦ the serializer/XmlWriter! Yes, letās all write at least 3 lines of code for every element, more if there are attributes!
I donāt have a problem with XML, but the notion that itās perfectly okay to expect developers to write 500 lines of code comprising 46 routines and 13 classes just to spawn a single document sounds characteristic of an Architecture Astronaut.
Maybe text-based templates arenāt the answer either, but you can use a single routine to escape a full XML string without the ridiculous overhead of a āwriterā. IMO, in order for XML to really be productive for developers, the dev tools either have to serialize it automatically (.NET Web Services), or allow it to be written ānativelyā (Ruby / XLinq). Without simplified support, Iād have to ask if the same problem could be solved with plain-text/CSV or an RDBMS.
Liquid XML Studio is a free XML Editor and graphical schema editor for windows, it provides āWell Formedā checking and validation against external XML Schemas. It also has an XSLT editor which can execute the transform and show the results. http://www.liquid-technologies.com/XmlStudio/Free-Xml-Editor.aspx