Wow! That's a beauty! And that's only because XML is BOTH a document and a data structure. It has two personalities, but only one identity. And it is not schizophrenic about it. It's always clear.
> A lot of that is because XML is objectively insane
I don't find "everything is a node" to be insane. It's like "Everything is a file" followed through up to the atomic value.
Do not confuse the additional specs like XSL, XPath and XQuery as the "XML" spec. These are your toolbox. And their volume is in no way bigger than any of the frameworks, programmers use. Also XSD is not really part of the XML spec. You don't need it in many cases.
It's a meta language, that consists of a simple convention: Elements and Attributes. You name them what you want and get a document, that, at the same time is a queriable datastructure. But I've said that already...
XML could never be used for data transfer. That is being done by the protocol. That would be, in most of the XML cases: HTTP(S).
GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stones/wp:discography/w... GET http://store.steamcommunity.com/profile/myprofile/games.xml/...
Wow! That's a beauty! And that's only because XML is BOTH a document and a data structure. It has two personalities, but only one identity. And it is not schizophrenic about it. It's always clear.
> A lot of that is because XML is objectively insane
I don't find "everything is a node" to be insane. It's like "Everything is a file" followed through up to the atomic value.
/net/host/volume/directory/file.xml/document-node/some/other/node/attribute
or
/net/host/volume/directory/file.xml//all-nodes[@where-this-attributes-value="foobar"]
Looks like a perfect match for both command line as well as RESTful access.
> monumentally over-specified
The XML spec, while having a healthy size, is not overly big: https://www.w3.org/TR/xml/
Do not confuse the additional specs like XSL, XPath and XQuery as the "XML" spec. These are your toolbox. And their volume is in no way bigger than any of the frameworks, programmers use. Also XSD is not really part of the XML spec. You don't need it in many cases.
It's a meta language, that consists of a simple convention: Elements and Attributes. You name them what you want and get a document, that, at the same time is a queriable datastructure. But I've said that already...