NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

Kenneth Downs wrote:
> And if you insist on using XML just because its so wonderful to use 17 
> characters to store the state <STATE>NY</STATE>, it will never be able 
> to compete with even the most immature relational engines for pure 
> speed.  Maybe on example and toy sites, but never for anything that 
> needs to scale.
> 
> If I'm wrong, dinner's on me.

Don't worry! Finally someone who sees XML as what it is and that it is 
by far not as glorious and the key to world peace as many claim. In the 
end XML is an ini file on steroids. And XML without DTD is only half of 
the pie....so much for self-defining.

I worked on projects where the project manager insisted on taking all 
SQL queries, converting them to XML just so that the database layer can 
convert them from XML back to SQL. I asked why not talk SQL directly to 
the database. The answer was that we have to have XML in it, just so 
that we can be open to third parties. Huh? That was for an embedded 
system and there aren't many (any?) db engines around that don't 
understand at least some SQL.

I think XML sucks. So now let's see what we can do with XML.

David