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There are a lot of great things about XML but I think it started falling out of favor when developers (primarily Java) started converting their internal OOP dat
by jugg1es 5y ago
There are a lot of great things about XML but I think it started falling out of favor when developers (primarily Java) started converting their internal OOP data structures into XML schemas and used that for all inter-service communication. It's a quick and dirty way to stand up an API and allowed developers to think of APIs as an after-thought. I work in healthcare and its obvious that this happens all the time. It was just too easy to run a tool to convert your OO classes into a WSDL instead of taking the time to design a proper API.
I think this had a lot of unintended consequences that has hurt XML in the long-run but has nothing to do with XML itself.
- Nursie 5y agoIs that significantly different from the way people now do this with JSON?
- jugg1es 5y agoThat is a fair point but, anecdotally, I have run into this problem more often with XML APIs than with JSON.
- jugg1es 5y agoAfter some thought, the reason JSON is different is due to how XML schemas include types and if you are converting the OO classes to an XML schema, you are basically injecting inheritance/composition into the actual API call. That does not happen in JSON because you don't have types.