It has been said before, but it deserves repeating: XML is overused. And often, made unnecessarily over-complicated for the task. Take for instance the example “A Simple Soap Client“.
Here is the request:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" >
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<calculateFibonacci
xmlns="http://namespaces.cafeconleche.org/xmljava/ch3/"
type="xsi:positiveInteger">10</calculateFibonacci>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
Here is the response:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" />
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<Fibonacci_Numbers
xmlns="http://namespaces.cafeconleche.org/xmljava/ch3/">
<fibonacci index="1">1</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="2">1</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="3">2</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="4">3</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="5">5</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="6">8</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="7">13</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="8">21</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="9">34</fibonacci>
<fibonacci index="10">55</fibonacci>
</Fibonacci_Numbers>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
Dear $DEITY, why do we need to define a new data type to hold a list of integers? And what in the world is that “index” attribute doing there? IT’S A FUCKING LIST. This is like a real-life example of the old XML binary encoding joke:
<data>
<binary>
<bit index="0">0</bit>
<bit index="1">0</bit>
<bit index="2">1</bit>
...
<bit index="n">1</bit>
</binary>
</data>
It’s just sad…
For the sake of it, let’s compare to a JSON-RPC version: (not the epitome of efficiency mind you, but an order of magnitude better)
--> { "method": "calculateFibonacci", "params": [10,], "id": 1}
<-- { "result": [1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55], "error": null, "id": 1}
Which would you rather use? 
