Steve On Java

To the custodians of technology platforms and future technology innovators,

We the undersigned formally request that you support alternatives to XML markup in programming languages, configuration, and data formats.

XML has its origins in document publishing, and comes from a long line of markup-based languages such as SGML. It is also widely adopted with many available implementations of parsers and generators that can process it and tools that facilitate tag-based editing. However, its suitability to modern requirements for declarative programming, configuration, and data transfer are a poor fit.

As a declarative programming language, XML is extremely verbose and difficult to maintain. Also, while initially very simple, advanced XML features such as namespaces and path references bring a surprisingly high level of complexity along. There are many alternative declarative languages that are much better suited for programming and maintainability, including a large number of domain specific languages that provide a much cleaner programming model, such as Ruby, Groovy, Scala, and Visage.

As a configuration format it is a poor choice for the same reasons it is not a suitable programming language. Configuration files are meant to be human editable and thus are better served with a domain specific language for configuration. However, it is often better to have the configuration live with the code, using an inline representation such as code annotations.

As a data transfer format, XML suffers from a high level of redundancy and poor mapping to both relational and object oriented representations. There are many better alternatives that are designed solely for this purpose and are both more compact in representation as well as easier to manually read and edit, such as JSON and YAML.

Therefore, we humbly request that you provide an alternative to XML for both declarative programming and data transfer formats in the external APIs and application frameworks that you create. This will help ensure the productivity and sanity of current and future generations of developers.

Vicente de Rivera III,
I haven't even read the notes above but I know XML is just to much. no need to ask why

Nick Apperley,
XML has been used in areas it wasn't designed for, like declaring the views for an application etc. Best to avoid XML as it has become a format which is notoriously difficult to read/write. One must know how the XML has been structured before using it (incl data types). This means one must deal with sub formats which shows the mess that XML has created.

riccardo2,
I've always said that XML is poor for many purposes and it was overused for a long time. It's now time to find the right alternative for the right purpose. Do NOT try to find a one-for-all solution or it will miss the goal like XML did till now. Thank you.

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The best decision someone's could make is to leave XML behind.