Languages?

syco__ · 10-07-2011, 04:06 PM

Hey Guys,

I am currently at uni studying Information Tech. So far we have done JavaScript and i really enjoyed it. This semester we have been focusing on PHP and XML and i really like PHP and enjoying using it. XML on the other hand so far hasn't excited me and cant really see where i would use this language in the future i look forward to getting into MySQL.

What i am really after is some thoughts to how you guys use XML or just what you think about it and if MySQL is a good choice to work towards next.

Thanks in advance.

syco__ · 10-07-2011, 04:30 PM

Also what is the future of the WEB i hear something about Procedural/Declarative languages and the future is in declarative. I am a little confused of the difference but what are your views?

tracknut · 10-07-2011, 04:44 PM

I use xml all the time, and find it hugely useful. I have several sites that I need to "configure" in a variety of ways, one has a list of events (and associated prices, dates, options, etc), and others just have general "information" that needs to be easily configurable. I use the SimpleXML interface (all my sites are php driven) to pull up all this info at run-time. So it saves me hard-coding such information throughout the site. And I find it much easier to implement such configurations via xml than using a database for them.

I have another site that most likely should be database driven, but for the moment I am using quite the volumes of XML files for various data stores. I find it easy, but to some extent it's one of those sites that if I had to do a code review in front of my peers, I'd be a bit embarrassed to say that it was not using a database, but tons of xml instead. Large portions of the xml on this site are duplicated text, one for each of multiple languages.

So don't write off xml quite yet, I suspect you'll find reasons to use it.

Dave

syco__ · 10-08-2011, 07:18 AM

Thanks ill stick with it then. Just wanted to hear if it was worth having the skill even if i don't use it as such much. Thanks for your reply.

tammywal22 · 10-11-2011, 02:59 AM

XML is essential and useful for data exchange, so you should learn and understand it!

However, I would suggest you look at JSON as well, it is quite light and definitely less verbose than XML. That mean the transfer time for JSON data is more fast than XML, so it is widely used in the communication between mobile apps and server.