I am a full-time consultant and provide services related to the design, implementation and deployment of mathematical programming, optimization and data-science applications. I also teach courses and workshops. Usually I cannot blog about projects I am doing, but there are many technical notes I'd like to share. Not in the least so I have an easy way to search and find them again myself. You can reach me at erwin@amsterdamoptimization.com.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
XML files: they are big
I received some XML files from a client. I am always surprised how big they are:
Depending on the nature of the content, the ratio of "overhead" (tag characters) to data (meaningful characters) can be rather high. I like the transparency of XML, but for some things a proprietary binary format may still be the best option.
That's why I was surprised to hear a few years ago that projects in COIN-OR are using (or were going to use) XML for saving model data. YAML or JSON would be better choices.
Depending on the nature of the content, the ratio of "overhead" (tag characters) to data (meaningful characters) can be rather high. I like the transparency of XML, but for some things a proprietary binary format may still be the best option.
ReplyDeleteThe XML file has 40+ tables buried inside. Transparency then becomes a little bit less obvious.
ReplyDeleteThere is a nice post about the angle bracket tax by Jeff Atwood here http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/xml-the-angle-bracket-tax.html
ReplyDeleteHe suggests YAML as an alternative to XML, which is much cleaner and smaller.
That's why I was surprised to hear a few years ago that projects in COIN-OR are using (or were going to use) XML for saving model data. YAML or JSON would be better choices.
ReplyDelete