Masklinn: you’re right that my examples were not very ceiclmpatod and could have been represented more simply in all three markup syntaxes see Crockford’s comment earlier, which made the same point as yours.Just to throw a wrench into it, though, you cannot always assume that order doesn’t matter. For example, try this:Saddam HusseinIf you break this down to a map then try to reconstruct the name, you’ll end up with Hussein Saddam instead of Saddam Hussein . The solution then, of course, is to add *another* property specifying whether the surname comes first or last.Next, you see a name like this:James Fitzwilliam Godwin IIIA simple ordering property won’t work now. Instead, for your map, you’ll have to include a surname, pre-surname, and post-surname property. And then you have the problem of honorifics, which can come before ( Dr. , Sir ) or after ( PhD , OBE ) the name, or prepositions like de in French and Spanish, which go with the surname but drop off for collation, etc.I think most people who work with real, non-trival data have experienced these kinds of problems, even when XML has never entered the equation notice how relational database schemas in production systems usually end up resembling a ball of tangled string more than the neat diagrams in textbooks.

finally can append to it but the type atruibttes 1 will write to the tag once i re-run the program Is that any way where it will continue the numbers instead of starting from 1 .Currently Xml file: ok1no2 Not I wanted Peter7 Hope to become: ok1no2 This is what I wanted Peter7 My Coding:Dim m As String = 1 Private Sub btnAdd_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnAdd.Click Dim doc As New Xml.XmlDocument load file doc.Load( data.xml ) Dim root As XmlNode = doc.SelectSingleNode( //Books ) If root Is Nothing Then if this is a new document create root root = doc.SelectSingleNode( //Books ) Else create node get root node named users Dim Usersnode As Xml.XmlElement = doc.SelectSingleNode( //Books ) add the new node Dim newNode As Xml.XmlElement = doc.CreateElement( Book ) add atruibttes newNode.SetAttribute( type , m) add children nodes if any Dim child As Xml.XmlElement = doc.CreateElement( Author ) child.InnerText = txtAuthor.Text newNode.AppendChild(child) child = doc.CreateElement( Section ) child.InnerText = txtSection.Text newNode.AppendChild(child) add new node to users node Usersnode.AppendChild(newNode) m += 1 End If save doc doc.Save( data.xml ) End SubThanks Was this answer helpful?

Other than that, JSON rocks. As Larry Wall puts it, “easy things should be easy and hard things should be possible”. That’s definitely the case with JSON. With XML, it’s more like “easy things are hard like hell, whereas hard things are next to impossible”. At least for RPC from the browser.

As for the scheme syntax: somebody (I think a speaker on google tech talk I saw on youtube) once said that Javascript is sort of a somewhat crippled Lisp with C syntax. Javascript is indeed a language in which you represent programs using the language’s own data structures, to a large extent – which is why JSON is so natural to Javascript. Which is probably why the scheme and JSON examples look so much alike.

“We must accept the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.”

XML vs JSON vs LISP, that would be the “religion” part. 😉

hmm. that’s why Dr. Codd devised the relational model. as one other commenter pointed out. folks may continue to stuff data into hierarchy, whether it belongs there or not. eventually, someone will “rediscover” that the magic of the relational algebra. sigh.

So here’s another challenge (should you choose to accept it 😉 Given “There is no information that can be represented in an XML document that cannot be represented in a JSON document”. Ok, we all know RDF/XML syntax is really ugly. So how would you do RDF in JSON?

(There are a few different systems which use RDF in Lisp, so that’s already covered. There’s also Turtle RDF syntax which is JSON-like in terms of simplicity, and I’m pretty sure Javascript browsers are available, but an eval() would be so much easier…)

The funny thing is that XPath conversely is such a nice API for querying XML that now I find myself wishing I had it available for native datastructures. Manually writing code to traverse them is tedious at best. The CPAN has several modules that implement (some subset of) XPath for document types it was not designed for, even one that adds an XPath interface to regular classes so that you can use XPath to walk object hierarchies.

i’m still unsure as to the ultimate feasibility, but projects like jsonml to bridge json and xml seem like they could be vital in the future. there’s a lot of xml out there already, but at this moment, i can say i would like very much to be able to ignore it for the rest of my days, and consume it as json.

( :name
:gender female
:lang it
:given “Anna Maria”
:sur “Mozart” )

( :name
:gender male
:lang en
:given “Fitzwilliam”
:sur “Darcy” )

( :name
:gender male
:lang fr
:given “Maurice”
:sur “Chevalier” )

( :name
:gender female
:lang de
:given 7.9
:sur NIL ) )

? The lisp can be made clearer, I think.