Re: The impact of data format selection on application development

On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 8:52 AM Stephen D Green <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Indeed. If you think about it, little/simple reduces the options for
> variation - fewer dimensions of variation. Allowing scalable variation
> by necessity adds complexity.
> ----
> Stephen D Green
>
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2022 at 12:13, Ihe Onwuka <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Simple is good but does not always scale. The caveat on simplicity is
> the simplest thing that works.
> >
> > On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 4:47 AM Stephen D Green <
> [email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >> You can write a simple little data format specification if the
> >> groundwork has been done, the foundation already laid, which handles
> >> the underlying complexity. This is what allowed J**N to be such a
> >> simple little spec.
> >> ----
> >> Stephen D Green
> >>
> >> On Sun, 10 Jul 2022 at 13:22, Roger L Costello <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Hi Folks,
> >> >
> >> > Recently I have been reading a wonderful book titled "Little
> Languages and Tools". Its authors are Jon Bentley, Brian Kernighan, Paul
> Hudak, and others. The book shows how programs written in little languages
> such as AWK, Lex, Yacc, pic (picture language), scatter (scatter plot
> language), troff, sed, can be independently developed and assembled via
> pipes
> >> >
> >> >               scatter infile | pic | troff >outfile
> >> >
> >> > Little languages provide a powerful way to quickly implement robust
> tools.
> >> >
> >> > Reading the book made me keenly aware of one thing: The XML data
> format is complex! Compare the densely written 36-page XML specification
> (plus the 16-page namespace specification) to this three-sentence
> specification of a data format:
> >> >
> >> > The data format consists of lines. Each line contains fields. Fields
> are separated by a delimiter (space, tab, comma, etc.).
> >> >
> >> > You might argue that such a data format is too simple to be useful.
> Not so! Much data may be expressed using that data format: a list of data
> about persons (name, age, gender). A list of data about aircraft in the
> Boeing inventory (model, weight, wingspan, max speed). A list of data about
> wild flora in the Amazon rainforest (species, size, lethality). A list of
> data about books (title, author, publisher). The types of data amenable to
> that data format is virtually endless. For data items that aren't in that
> format, there are tools available for putting them into the format.
> >> >
> >> > Simple data formats often spawn the development of powerful little
> tools. AWK is one such tool. With a line or two of AWK code you can quickly
> implement powerful data filters for transforming data in the above data
> format.
> >> >
> >> > What is the role of XML as a data format? What is the role of very
> simple data formats such as the one above? The answer is not clear-cut in
> my mind. What does seem clear, however, is that choosing the right data
> format can have a significant impact on application development - on the
> ease of development, on the cognitive load it incurs on the developer and
> maintainer, on the ability to create independent tools that can be
> assembled in a pipeline.
> >> >
> >> > "The important thing, as always, is to find a way of looking at the
> input data that makes it easy to lay out the program." ["Software Tools" by
> Brian Kernighan, p. 42]
> >> >
> >> > Comments?
> >> >
> >> > /Roger
> >> >
> >> >
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