5 ms·

Honestly, why XML? Isn't JSON 100 times better, smaller and easy to use than XML? why choose a legacy format (with known security problems in parsers, compabili

by cbolat 4y ago

Honestly, why XML? Isn't JSON 100 times better, smaller and easy to use than XML? why choose a legacy format (with known security problems in parsers, compability, and unnecessary use of bandwidth) in 2022?

huggingmouth 4y ago
While i prefer json, I absolutly would not consider xml a legacy format.
alexchamberlain 4y ago
It looks like the primary implementation is in Java, which is still all about SOAP services and XSDs.
- rschoultz 4y ago
  We are on Java 19 now. Several that spits out the same sentiment as you seem to be stuck with Java 8 and EE legacy projects from 2012.
magicalhippo 4y ago
Tooling around JSON schema is lacking. For example, we have a fairly simple XSD which still requires the latest JSON schema version due to a choice element (IIRC), which Swagger doesn't fully support yet.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  I think the reason is that mostly people don't define schemas for their json to begin with. Back when xml was still commonly used, xml schemas were optional as well. The notion of insisting on adding longish urls to every attribute and namespacing elements and attributes, kind of defeated the purpose of using xml. It made everything harder; including parsing, xsl transformations, xpath expressions, etc.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    "adding longish urls to every attribute and namespacing elements and attributes" Who thought this was a good idea?
berkes 4y ago
> Isn't JSON 100 times better, smaller and easy to use than XML? Quite certainly not. It's not even more popular if HTML is included. It may be smaller, but not nessecarily so: both json and XML are easy to compress due to repetitive (overhead) characters. Uncompressed it depends on the use-case and implementation: the ability to have both attributes and content on a node, allow (but certainly not always are) XML to be smaller than JSON which does not have this. Easy to use depends on the features: JSON is gaining complexity rapidly (json-ld, json-templates, jsonschemas etc) to fill up what XML can do OOTB. Sure: an all-out XML (XMLT, DTD, etc) is far more complex than a simple JSON. But hardly more than a JSON with JSTL, JSon-schema etc. The exact same performance and security problems arise in JSON with all these features bolted on. In other words: "it depends". But the idea that "JSON is 100x better" is repeated oft in the tech scene, yet impossible to back up in general. JSON may certainly be better for your case. But so can XML.
- sirsinsalot 4y ago
  What?! You mean everyone is just endlessly reinventing the wheel? You mean they start out simple then quickly realise much of the complexity of the prior is useful?! Well I never!
  - berkes 4y ago
    I wouldn't call JSON a reinvented wheel. It has different tradeoffs, and so fills a real niche that XML couldn't. However, we, the engineering community tend to fall in this hammer-nail mindset. Where we know and like JSON, and then start applying it outside of its fitting niche. We start using it for configuration (only to find out it's lack of features such as not allowing comments makes it fully unusable). We invent stuff like symlinks, linked data, schemas, JSLT, etc. rather than moving to a much more appropriate format, we change the inappropriate format into an abomination.
- hk__2 4y ago
  > Quite certainly not. It's not even more popular if HTML is included. Nowadays HTML is not XML anymore [1]. [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/39560454/735926 https://stackoverflow.com/a/39560454/735926
kybernetyk 4y ago
Json is terribly unstructured
- dewey 4y ago
  There's https://json-schema.org https://json-schema.org for that.
hokkos 4y ago
With EXI encoding the format XML is many times smaller than Json, it can uses XSD to have a scheme aware compression, and it is better structured with XSD. https://www.w3.org/TR/exi/ https://www.w3.org/TR/exi/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thibaut_barrere 4y ago
Maybe because other standards (https://www.datex2.eu/datex2/about https://www.datex2.eu/datex2/about) in the same area are also XML based, I wonder :-)

by cbolat 4y ago

huggingmouth 4y ago

While i prefer json, I absolutly would not consider xml a legacy format.

alexchamberlain 4y ago

It looks like the primary implementation is in Java, which is still all about SOAP services and XSDs.

rschoultz 4y ago
We are on Java 19 now. Several that spits out the same sentiment as you seem to be stuck with Java 8 and EE legacy projects from 2012.

magicalhippo 4y ago

Tooling around JSON schema is lacking. For example, we have a fairly simple XSD which still requires the latest JSON schema version due to a choice element (IIRC), which Swagger doesn't fully support yet.

jillesvangurp 4y ago
I think the reason is that mostly people don't define schemas for their json to begin with. Back when xml was still commonly used, xml schemas were optional as well. The notion of insisting on adding longish urls to every attribute and namespacing elements and attributes, kind of defeated the purpose of using xml. It made everything harder; including parsing, xsl transformations, xpath expressions, etc.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  "adding longish urls to every attribute and namespacing elements and attributes" Who thought this was a good idea?

berkes 4y ago

> Isn't JSON 100 times better, smaller and easy to use than XML? Quite certainly not. It's not even more popular if HTML is included. It may be smaller, but not nessecarily so: both json and XML are easy to compress due to repetitive (overhead) characters. Uncompressed it depends on the use-case and implementation: the ability to have both attributes and content on a node, allow (but certainly not always are) XML to be smaller than JSON which does not have this. Easy to use depends on the features: JSON is gaining complexity rapidly (json-ld, json-templates, jsonschemas etc) to fill up what XML can do OOTB. Sure: an all-out XML (XMLT, DTD, etc) is far more complex than a simple JSON. But hardly more than a JSON with JSTL, JSon-schema etc. The exact same performance and security problems arise in JSON with all these features bolted on. In other words: "it depends". But the idea that "JSON is 100x better" is repeated oft in the tech scene, yet impossible to back up in general. JSON may certainly be better for your case. But so can XML.

sirsinsalot 4y ago
What?! You mean everyone is just endlessly reinventing the wheel? You mean they start out simple then quickly realise much of the complexity of the prior is useful?! Well I never!
- berkes 4y ago
  I wouldn't call JSON a reinvented wheel. It has different tradeoffs, and so fills a real niche that XML couldn't. However, we, the engineering community tend to fall in this hammer-nail mindset. Where we know and like JSON, and then start applying it outside of its fitting niche. We start using it for configuration (only to find out it's lack of features such as not allowing comments makes it fully unusable). We invent stuff like symlinks, linked data, schemas, JSLT, etc. rather than moving to a much more appropriate format, we change the inappropriate format into an abomination.
hk__2 4y ago
> Quite certainly not. It's not even more popular if HTML is included. Nowadays HTML is not XML anymore [1]. [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/39560454/735926 https://stackoverflow.com/a/39560454/735926

kybernetyk 4y ago

Json is terribly unstructured

dewey 4y ago
There's https://json-schema.org https://json-schema.org for that.

hokkos 4y ago

With EXI encoding the format XML is many times smaller than Json, it can uses XSD to have a scheme aware compression, and it is better structured with XSD. https://www.w3.org/TR/exi/ https://www.w3.org/TR/exi/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thibaut_barrere 4y ago

Maybe because other standards (https://www.datex2.eu/datex2/about https://www.datex2.eu/datex2/about) in the same area are also XML based, I wonder :-)