a high level language

[Patrick Dowler]

On February 24, 2003 12:25, Kirk Borne wrote:
> Ed's comments elaborate on the rationale for a VO Query Language,
> but let's not forget the point ... VOQL is a language in a standard
> format (XML) for specifying queries to distributed heterogeneous
> astronomical information resources.  

Here I would like to strongly DISAGREE. There is no need to a-priori define
VOQL in terms of XML. XML is a serialization format that one uses to 
exchange structured text. It is a huge mistake to pre-suppose that anything 
is fundamentally an XML thing. It is an even bigger mistake to "design with 
XML". I am not saying XML will or should not be part of the solution; it
should not be goal...

I suppose this comment could be addressed to every IVOA mailing list,
but I'll leave it here for now.

-- 
Patrick Dowler
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