Wish I’d read this first

I’ve been partially responsible for the creation of a new XML format for use at work. We’ve been working on it for around six months. It does the job- but it sure is ugly. A lot of that is because we didn’t have a nice set of standards to begin with. I wish I’d known about Google’s XML Document Format Style Guide six months ago.

The major things that leap out at me:

• Consistency. This is really grinding on me at the moment. Parts of the format are camelCase, parts are all lowercase, others just random. In parts we use venetian blind design, other places Russian doll.
• The build versus design argument: we built part, and borrowed a large chunk at the ninth hour (big part of the reason behind the inconsistency.)

I’m not completely sold that reusing an existing format would have been better. There are existing formats out there to deal with the type of data we’re using (financial services client/account details.) In this case, though, we face some unique constraints.

The schema is directly exposed to users at two levels. Firstly, through automatically generated forms from the off-the-shelf package we’re implementing. And secondly, behind the scenes, to BAs that support that package. The schema that we stole parts of was clearly not designed for this type of exposure. It focussed on machine-readability over human readability. We needed to do a lot of work to clean it up.

Updates

A few quick updates for keen readers: I know I haven’t been posting as regularly as I would like. There are a few things in the pipeline, but nothing brought to fruition as yet.

For those worried about whether or not my business case for multiple monitors was successful or not: it was indeed successful. My PC was swapped out and a second monitor installed on Thursday morning. So far, they are everything I hoped for and more.

I’m sure there is also great interest in how things are progressing with Phoenix, the idea of managing IT systems from cradle to cradle, rather than cradle to grave. Unfortunately, there has not been a great deal of activity on this front, but let me leave you with a qualification, a question, and the promise of more to come.

The qualification: Despite the reference to Cradle to Cradle, Phoenix isn’t about green IT systems – although they are very important. Instead, Phoenix is about how the information imbedded in one system survives the death of that system, and rebirth in another.

The question: if you’re developing new functionality with a system today, the odds are pretty good that XML is involved. Are we at the point where we have standardised building blocks for XML schemas? For example, physical mailing addresses: is there the one true XML schema for address information? Or are there a half a dozen competing standards, plus hundreds of unique implementations imbedded within larger frameworks?

The promise of more to come: there will be more to come.