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Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

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Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#41

Post by naasking »

lucideer wrote: post #24
terom wrote: post #13

Disregarding the emphasis on XML -> replaced with JSON, isn't this actually mostly spot-on re the popularity of Single-Page Apps (SPA)? There is very little if any HTML in the form of the text-based markup involved in a modern SPA - the actual display logic is all DOM manipulation in JavaScript, operating on separate APIs providing just the raw data in JSON form. > Truly powerful applications can be built using combi…

> isn't this actually mostly spot-on Only if you accept the initial premise, which is nonsense. The article is based on the idea of HTML as an interchange format, something that's only the case in dysfunctional situations (scraping data illegally, or a horrific breakdown in communication/collaboration between two business entities). Sure, there was a for a time a big focus on XHTML as a "hybrid" format - interweaving…

> The article is based on the idea of HTML as an interchange format, something that's only the case in dysfunctional situations (scraping data illegally, or a horrific breakdown in communication/collaboration between two business entities).

Think again:

https://schema.org/docs/gs.html

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#42

Post by coldtea »

qsort wrote: post #4
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #2

Funny. Among other things, XML is self describing . Yeah sure. We all know how that turned out. That was the day when everybody was crazy about the Semantic Web, and for some reason XML / some convoluted format built on XML was viewed by many as "semantic", apparently because of the many intractable URLs the format called for. Y'know, URLs, or was it URIs or URNs, those little pieces of text that, even when they poin…

If you replace XML with JSON and PDAs with phone apps he's spot on. "Truly powerful applications can be built using combinations of JavaScript and XML" "XML can be used to mediate between Database row-based output, asynchronous message records, and other types of business forms and data." "Business-based TXP systems of the future will need to incorporate XML as part of their backbone services technology. The ability…

The difference being that JSON doesn't have the pretentiousness, mental, tooling and processing overhead, and the marketing-imposed-solution-of-a-non-problem XML was sold as...

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#43

Post by coldtea »

WesSouza wrote: post #20

One would never use HTML to transfer data between two systems*, this author really missed the Forest for the trees. *unless of course one system is scraping the other and has no control of what it outputs.

>One would never use HTML to transfer data between two systems

And yet it happened all the time back in the day, and there was even a big push to get into XML-izing html to xhtml and make it stricter and parsable and "semantic".

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#44

Post by smrtinsert »

cesaref wrote: post #22

All this talk of XML has given me some bad XSLT flashbacks, not to mention XSL:FO.

Nonsense! XSLT was cool, maybe not that useful ultimately but very cool to use. I remember a few xsls I wrote tidying a very complex piece of xml cleanly whereas the corresponding java or javascript would have looked absolutely awful.

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#45

Post by pdntspa »

paganel wrote: post #35
gauddasa wrote: post #27

This article would have turned true in its prediction about the fate of HTML, and the idolized XML with JS would have met the same doom, except for one piece of technology that saved them all: AJAX.

> except for one piece of technology that saved them all: AJAX. We have to thank the MS Office guys for that. Also interesting how RPCs have become cool again, even though under different names, one would have thought that the whole REST thing would have had the better of them.

The way everyone seems to demand finished API libraries like spoiled children, it would seem we are building RPC right on the back of REST.

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#46

Post by qsort »

coldtea wrote: post #42
qsort wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you replace XML with JSON and PDAs with phone apps he's spot on. "Truly powerful applications can be built using combinations of JavaScript and XML" "XML can be used to mediate between Database row-based output, asynchronous message records, and other types of business forms and data." "Business-based TXP systems of the future will need to incorporate XML as part of their backbone services technology. The ability…

The difference being that JSON doesn't have the pretentiousness, mental, tooling and processing overhead, and the marketing-imposed-solution-of-a-non-problem XML was sold as...

Oh absolutely. XML and HTML are the epitome of trying to solve a problem that's not very hard, and not solving it very well.

S-expressions reinvented badly.

JSON does have the same problem at its core, but at least it's simple and the data structures it offers (dicts and lists) are semi-reasonable primitives.

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#47

Post by paganel »

pdntspa wrote: post #45
paganel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except for one piece of technology that saved them all: AJAX. We have to thank the MS Office guys for that. Also interesting how RPCs have become cool again, even though under different names, one would have thought that the whole REST thing would have had the better of them.

The way everyone seems to demand finished API libraries like spoiled children, it would seem we are building RPC right on the back of REST.

> it would seem we are building RPC right on the back of REST

Yeah, that, most definitely, but as I've stopped following that space some many years ago (I used to be a REST groupie) I didn't know how best to put it.

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#48

Post by commandlinefan »

lucideer wrote: post #24
terom wrote: post #13

Disregarding the emphasis on XML -> replaced with JSON, isn't this actually mostly spot-on re the popularity of Single-Page Apps (SPA)? There is very little if any HTML in the form of the text-based markup involved in a modern SPA - the actual display logic is all DOM manipulation in JavaScript, operating on separate APIs providing just the raw data in JSON form. > Truly powerful applications can be built using combi…

> isn't this actually mostly spot-on Only if you accept the initial premise, which is nonsense. The article is based on the idea of HTML as an interchange format, something that's only the case in dysfunctional situations (scraping data illegally, or a horrific breakdown in communication/collaboration between two business entities). Sure, there was a for a time a big focus on XHTML as a "hybrid" format - interweaving…

> the initial premise, which is nonsense.

The initial premise is: "HTML is a strategic dead end _for business transactions and e-commerce_". That premise is absolutely spot-on.

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#49

Post by commandlinefan »

smrtinsert wrote: post #44
cesaref wrote: post #22

All this talk of XML has given me some bad XSLT flashbacks, not to mention XSL:FO.

Nonsense! XSLT was cool, maybe not that useful ultimately but very cool to use. I remember a few xsls I wrote tidying a very complex piece of xml cleanly whereas the corresponding java or javascript would have looked absolutely awful.

> a few xsls I wrote tidying a very complex piece of xml cleanly

Me too! But then I saw other people's XSL's... yes, XSL should be buried or highly restricted to a very few people.

Re: Why HTML is a strategic dead end for business transactions and e-commerce (1999)

#50

Post by veqq »

Sacho wrote: post #40
lucideer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't this actually mostly spot-on Only if you accept the initial premise, which is nonsense. The article is based on the idea of HTML as an interchange format, something that's only the case in dysfunctional situations (scraping data illegally, or a horrific breakdown in communication/collaboration between two business entities). Sure, there was a for a time a big focus on XHTML as a "hybrid" format - interweaving…

This article was written during a time where the idea of a semantic web was still bright and strong. Scrapable HTML websites would have been at the forefront of interchange ideas then.

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