complex XML data

[Jimmy Zhang]

Hi, I am looking for XML data that are not regular in shape.
I have tried different places but most file I got a pretty regular in shape.
Can someone tell me why that is the case?
In what situations would people use very complex shaped XML?
Any justifications? I know this can be a hard one.

 

[Andy Fish]

Hi, I am looking for XML data that are not regular in shape.
I have tried different places but most file I got a pretty regular in shape.
Can someone tell me why that is the case?
In what situations would people use very complex shaped XML?
Any justifications? I know this can be a hard one.

I'm not sure what you mean by complex shaped, but I guess you mean data that
is not regular or tabular in structure.

As a good example of that, consider what we would call 'document oriented
XML' e.g.

<text>here is some text <bold>this is in bold <italic>this is bold and
italic></italic></bold>
this is normal again<ul><li>bullet</li><li>second bullet</li></ul></text>

that is a perfectly valid piece of XML.

HTH

Andy

 

[Bart Van der Donck]

Hi, I am looking for XML data that are not regular in shape.
I have tried different places but most file I got a pretty regular in shape.
Can someone tell me why that is the case?
In what situations would people use very complex shaped XML?
Any justifications? I know this can be a hard one.

I guess most sample XML files on the internet would be pretty simple
because of clarity, and they are often mentionned as examples or for
educational purposes. People do not really 'choose' to use complex
XML, it is just the nature of their data that requires it.

You ask for a situation? Well let's say that an application is set up
to receive XML-requests over the internet and do things with that
(interpreting, responding, perform database queries,...). When you
deal with a complex database structure, then the XML part could easily
get more complex than you want.

XML has very basic bottomlines with giant possibilities to make it as
complex as you want. I believe this is the main reason why XML is that
popular. Succesfull software often has this same core idea: unix
programs, sql,...
A bit like LEGO bricks... Yes I liked LEGO more than PLAYMOBIL when I
was a kid =)

Bart