Database->python->Xml->Xslt->Client

[Alex Martelli]

Michel Claveau - abstraction méta-galactique non triviale en fuite
perpétuelle. <unseulmcmcmcmc at msupprimerlepoint.claveauPOINTcom> wrote:

> It is an architecture "en vogue" ; but AMHA, XML is verbose.

Not any more verbose, typically, than HTML doing the presentation of
whatever data the XML is encoding, which I take is the alternative John
(the OP) is comparing again (he didn't actually explain the alternative
architectures he's considering, but that one would appear to be the
default...).  If the XML is a high semantic level it can end up quite a
bit more compact than the HTML needed for nice presentation, even when
you factor out a lot of CSS from the latter to rely on the CSS getting
cached.

Fashion apart, I do think the proposed architecture may improve
performance compared to having the server prepare and send all HTML.  It
spreads the computational load (if the XML the server is sending is
pretty close to the database's content, at least) and may even reduce
the bandwidth (often not a key bottleneck in an intranet, particularly
these days with gigabit ethernet finally becoming cheap... but sometimes
VPNs and the like do extend an intranet over links where bandwidth CAN
be a problem!-).

Having the server supply raw data and spreading out even more work to
the clients would be more of the same, but would require way fatter
clients, and that carries its own set of issues.  What the OP described
can be done easily by decent browsers, today, with no need for fat
clients and all of their many issues.


Alex