Re: The impact of data format selection on application development

On Sun, 10 Jul 2022 at 15:29, Roger L Costello <[email protected]> wrote:

> Ihe gave this as an example of a data format that is simple and is XML:
>
> <thoughtProvoker name="Roger Costello"/>
>
> I think a good measure of the simplicity of a data format is how much
> prose (ink) is needed to explain the format. Clearly not a lot of ink would
> be needed to explain the above format to an XML person. But if the person
> knows nothing about XML, then large amounts of ink would be needed; likely
> a substantial amount of the XML specification.
>
> Contrast with this data format:
>
> Jon Bentley     Avaya
> Brian Kernighan         Princeton University
> Paul Hudak      Yale University
>
> Explaining that data format is simple:
>
> The data format consists of lines


Not simple at all, what is a "line"? Ending with U+000A, or U+000D ? Pairs
of those, combined with U+0085 or U+2028 ?

Here is half a screenful of text just describing an end of line

https://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml11-20060816/#sec-line-ends

are you sure that is not needed?




> . Each line contains two fields separated by a tab symbol. The first field
> is the name of a person. The second field is the person’s employer.
>
>
There are no tabs in the text I see (in gmail) just 4 spaces Either your
client or the mail list or my client stripped the tabs, but that's what
happens with under specified formats.

David

Ihe also wrote:
>
> > Simplicity is good but if the data format (and/or its supporting
> ecosystem)
> > is too simple for the application the work simply shifts to the
> application
> > where it will probably be duplicated and subjected to multiple
> approaches.
>
> What does this mean: "the data format is too simple for the application to
> work"?
>
> As for an ecosystem for a data format, the neat thing about little
> languages is that it's easy to build little tools to support them. That is,
> it's easy to quickly develop an ecosystem.
>
> Lastly, Ihe wrote:
>
> > Simplicity is good but it can also be a one way bet at the outset from
> which:
> > there is no upgrade path. So if you subsequently decide that there are
> > structures latent in data you once thought was suitable to be treated as
> > text you are going to have a hard time shifting a text based ecosystem
> > to exploit that.
>
> I think this is talking about enhancing a data format with additional
> kinds of data.  For example, in the data format above, add the person's age:
>
> Jon Bentley     Avaya   61
> Brian Kernighan         Princeton University    80
> Paul Hudak      Yale University 62
>
> From my (admittedly brief) experience with little tools such as AWK, such
> an enhancement would be seamlessly handled.
>
> Thanks for the comments Ihe!
>
> /Roger
>
>