Serializations and data structures (was Re: Topic MapsonSQL)

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Paul Prescod
| 
| You must have a serialization syntax, but they are technically
| interchangeable: SGML, XML, S-Expressions, etc. 

I should come back when I'm awake enough to explain what I mean in
understandable terms, I think. In other words: of course.

* Paul Prescod
|
| If we've checkmated him, why bother continuing? :)

Stalemate! I meant stalemate! (Left my dictionary (and brain) at home.)

| Luckily I've already got an answer to this question:
|
| [answer snipped]

Hmmm. I seem to recall having seen this before?

[From a different email in the same thread:]

* david at megginson.com
| 
| [...] I assert that the choice is not between XML syntax or an XML
| data model, but between an implicit or explicit XML data model.
| 
| Syntax is worthless without a data model; a data model is unusable
| without syntax. If you leave either one unspecified, people will
| start inventing their own versions (sometimes with good results, and
| sometimes with bad).

Thank you for posting this excellent serialization of the thoughts in
my head. Much better than my own previous serialization attempt. :)

| Anyway, guys and girls, everyone in every discipline in Western
| Civilization has already hashed out this argument in every possible
| guise over more than two millennia [...] I think that other cultures
| must laugh at us.

That they don't care about the subjective/objective dichotomy does not
mean that they don't have interminable philosophical arguments. :)

--Lars M. (who doesn't like writing this kind of posting, but didn't
           want to leave people wondering what happened to the
           discussion, either)


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