Trying to parse a HUGE(1gb) xml file

Stefan Behnel stefan_ml at behnel.de
Sat Dec 25 11:51:09 EST 2010


Steve Holden, 25.12.2010 16:55:
> On 12/23/2010 4:34 PM, Stefan Sonnenberg-Carstens wrote:
>> For large datasets I always have huge question marks if one says "xml".
>> But I don't want to start a flame war.
>
> I agree people abuse the "spirit of XML" using it to transfer gigabytes
> of data

I keep reading people say that (and *much* worse). XML may not be the 
tightly tailored solution for data of that size, but it's not inherently 
wrong to store gigabytes of data in XML. I mean, XML is a reasonably fast, 
versatile, widely used, well-compressing and safe data format with an 
extremely ubiquitous and well optimised set of tools available for all 
sorts of environments. So as soon as the data is any complex or the 
environments require portable data exchange, I consider XML a reasonable 
choice, even for large data sets (which usually implies that it's machine 
generated outputo anyway).

Stefan




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