"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy." Patrick Logan's weblog.

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Wednesday, October 01, 2003

RSS-Data

I just started chewing on Jeremy Allaire's item on RSS-Data. This is from a very constructive comments thread, followed by some very preliminary thoughts...

I'd love to see an example showing how RSS-Data is a Good Thing compared to a similar RSS 2.0 w/namespace example. It just seems like we're losing some precious semantic information when we drop down to datatypes in the document.

  • I like the idea, because I like XML-RPC's data definitions, more or less, especially how uncomplicated they are for programmers.
  • I don't like the idea for the same reason, it does not result in domain-specific XML tags and document definitions.
  • The difference between these two points is that in XML-RPC this "tagged data" document is represented as a struct

As per Greg and Eric... whether you use this approach or an XML namespace approach, you still have the same need for an out-of-band agreement. In either case you will have nested values and name/value pairs that only "mean" something to the people who write the code that makes it useful.

In short, I could get code working with either approach (and will probably have to). There will be thrash, but congratulations for getting a very important ball rolling.

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Portland, Oregon, United States
I'm usually writing from my favorite location on the planet, the pacific northwest of the u.s. I write for myself only and unless otherwise specified my posts here should not be taken as representing an official position of my employer. Contact me at my gee mail account, username patrickdlogan.