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RE: Gentran:Server for Unix Question
At the risk of offending my EDI friends, I would point out one positive
thing about XML: No matter what set of tags and data you use it for, it
has only one syntax (so far). The SAX and DOM parsers can parse any
well-formed XML. What one does with the data once it's been parsed is
another matter entirely. In my current working capacity I'm aware of at
least six distinct and somewhat incompatible EDI syntax definitions (not
counting versions of EDIFACT) and I'd bet there are others I, in my
limited world-view, haven't found out about yet. 8-)
Best regards,
Bill Chessman
Inovis(tm)
P.S. The above e-mail and this postscript were written in English, not
because it was ubiquitous, better or standard. The cosmic lottery
simply made it my particular native tongue.
-----Original Message-----
From: Andres Tomlin [mailto:
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 6:23 AM
To: 'William J. Kammerer'; 'EDI-L Mailing List'
Subject: RE: [EDI-L] Gentran:Server for Unix Question
All you are proving is that more developers know XML than EDIFACT
standards,
regardless of suitability for the application.
XML is fine for a variety of applications, but don't asume that it is
better
for business transactions just because there are more potential
developers
out there. More people know Visual Basic than C++ but it doesn't make
it
more suitable for e.g. writing games. Even your monkeys would agree
with
that.
Andres.
England.
-----Original Message-----
From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 1:12 PM
To: 'EDI-L Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [EDI-L] Gentran:Server for Unix Question
Learning Albanian is presumably no more difficult than learning English.
But
the choice of language in which to write scientific articles and conduct
business is English - for "most" folks. Simply because it's more
ubiquitous,
thanks to the first Queen Elizabeth.
Learning XML requires "experience" and
"tutorials/lessons/documentation", to
be sure. But XML has more ready applications than just e-business. Thus,
it's far more likely that folks will spend the energy and time learning
it
(rather than EDIFACT or X12
syntax) if they already haven't done so. There's a viral effect.
I don't know where your "here" is. But, yes, like the children at Lake
Woebegone, all the monkeys of Columbus are above average.
William J. Kammerer
Novannet, LLC.
Columbus, OH 43221-3859 . USA
+1 (614) 487-0320
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andres Tomlin" <
To: "'William J. Kammerer'" < "'EDI-L Mailing
List'"
<
Sent: Tuesday, 25 January, 2005 04:43 AM
Subject: RE: [EDI-L] Gentran:Server for Unix Question
Every one of "the millions of people" who know this XML "trivia" (as
opposed
to EDIFACT "arcana") have learnt it in the same way that the "few
hundred
folks" who know EDIFACT did. They learnt it from experience, from
assistance
or from tutorials/lessons/documentation.
Monkeys may be smarter in Columbus but XML is not so ubiquitous around
here
that everyone knows how to develop in it. I did not know the escape
sequences in XML but then I don't need to. And millions of people don't
know
EDIFACT escape characters. Because they don't need to. They are both
easy to
implement when you know how.
Andres.
-----Original Message-----
From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 10:46 PM
To: EDI-L Mailing List
Subject: Re: [EDI-L] Gentran:Server for Unix Question
Chris, one nice thing about XML is that this business of the "quote"
would
never have arisen as an issue. Of course, in XML there are special
characters like ampersand (&) and the left angle bracket (<) that can't
appear in their literal form within data, but there are standard escape
sequences such as "&" or "<".
You might say this is analogous to the EDIFACT situation where "?" is
used
to escape delimiters, but there is a BIG difference: everyone in the
world
who's made a web page with HTML is familiar with the concept. There are
literally millions of people who know this XML trivia, but I would wager
that only a few hundred folks in the entire world know the escaping
arcana
from ISO 9735 EDIFACT syntax. And perhaps only a few dozen know whether
or
how Sterling's Gentran:Server accommodates this EDIFACT standard
technique.
That's the beauty of XML: it's so ubiquitous, any monkey walking in off
the
street knows the syntax - or is expected to. With practically all syntax
considerations out of the way - handled in a standard manner understood
by
every programmer - folks will finally be able to concentrate on their
e-business applications.
William J. Kammerer
Novannet, LLC.
Columbus, OH 43221-3859 . USA
+1 (614) 487-0320
.
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