MicroXML: The future of XML?

By Suzanne Kattau

July 5, 2012 — (Page 2 of 3)
He said that MicroXML is not intended to compete with existing applications of XML, but to extend the range of XML into places where XML has historically been disfavored for its perceived complexity.

When asked for more details, Cowan explained, “In particular, MicroXML is not specially applicable to the Web, although it is easy to write documents which are both valid HTML5 and well-formed MicroXML; this makes them easier to process server-side before delivering as HTML.”

According to Cowan, some of the benefits of MicroXML include its simplicity. “The specification is shorter (10 pages vs. about 50 pages for XML + XML Namespaces + XML Base + xml:id), and hopefully easier to understand,” he explained. “The data model is much simpler to use. Consequently, both parsers and applications are easier to write.”

MicroXML is backward-compatible to XML. In fact, “All MicroXML documents are also well-formed XML. Almost any XML document can be converted to MicroXML without loss of information,” Cowan said.

He said MicroXML is easier to use than XML “because there are fewer special cases, and because programs based on the MicroXML data model don't have to handle all those special cases. The entire data model of MicroXML is composed of elements, attribute-value pairs and character content.”

But MicroXML has been slow to gain attention, despite a seeming lack of active opposition. Cowan went so far as to say, “There is a lot more indifference than support. Most people who use XML are content with it, warts and all, and those who aren't content and don't use it have never heard of MicroXML.”

Those who have heard of MicroXML express doubts that the new specification is even necessary. Among them are blogger Anne van Kesteren, who wrote in a Dec. 21, 2010 blog post titled, “Why do we need MicroXML?”: “Dropping a few features from XML would certainly make it less complex... But I am not convinced that is really worth it. Going to XML from SGML made sense. Nobody managed to implement SGML fully. Implementing XML, while non-trivial, has been done a fair number of times.

Related Search Term(s): MicroXML, W3C, XML

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