There are many issues to consider in studying how workable binary XML might be in business applications, according to Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, the analyst firm specializing in XML standards and applications.

In a report on the issue, “Will Binary XML Solve XML Performance Woes?” he notes that because XML is designed to be read both by machines and humans, it results in “message sizes that can easily be 10 to 50 times larger than equivalent messages sent via binary encodings.”

“To make matters worse,” Schmelzer writes, “conducting a simple point-to-point exchange between XML conversant endpoints might require each of the following operations: decryption, validation, parsing, marshalling, serialization, canonicalization, document signing, and encryption.”

Binary XML would speed this processing up and is cleaner than the alternative approach of compressing the XML text into a zip file, which has the downside of adding a processing step—zipping and unzipping—at each end of any communication, he notes.

That said, the ZapThink analyst does not see binary XML as the mythological silver bullet. The main downside is that every point in an XML process would have to be set up to handle the binary format, according to the analyst. While this might seem like a simple requirement, it may not be.

“While proponents often talk about how endpoints can easily be configured to deal with binary XML,” Schmelzer writes, “they often neglect the fact that intermediaries between the communicating parties often must be able to inspect and make decisions on that traffic. As a result, binary XML’s global acceptance hinges upon all security, process, management, and transformation systems or devices being able to understand and process the binary XML format.”

The issue of proprietary formats also raises its ugly head.

“Furthermore,” the ZapThink analyst writes, “binary XML raises the specter of potential compatibility and vendor lock-in concerns. For example, the format chosen to represent numerical data, such as integers, floating point numbers, or arrays, must be platform independent, so that different consuming platforms are able to take advantage of the performance boost that such native formatting offers—a tall order in today’s complex, heterogeneous IT environment.”

Read more at: Application Development Trends