I haven't written much about work here recently. There hasn't been a lot to say--well sort of. I'm in limbo with the whole "I'm moving to Yahoo! Search sometime soon but not too soon and am waiting on other people" thing going on.
On the slightly interesting front, I've been involved in some interesting discussions about the suitability of XML/XSLT to a major revamp of a the Yahoo! Finance infrastructure. It's really fascinating in a way. This stuff all sounds great in theory. But there are so many little and not-so-little issues that come up when you're considering a major shift toward this relatively "new" technology.
The discussions aren't over yet. In fact, they're really starting to get interesting now. For a while it was a less engaging "status quo vs. PHP vs. XML/XSLT" sort of conversation. Now it's headed along the "what if we decided to adopt this in a major way?" direction. Would that better position us for internal data sharing? Separation of business logic from presentation logic? Web services? And so on...
Strangely, this is the first time in 3 years that I've really felt like many of the engineers in Y! Finance have come together to attack a common strategic problem and really re-think things. We're all so used to just working within the confines of our little sub-groups on tactical problems. There are three sub-groups, if you're curious.
Anyway, I'd write more about it (because I've been thinking a lot about it and what it means for building modern infrastructure), but I fear that it's not terribly interesting stuff to most people.
Posted by jzawodn at October 21, 2002 11:30 PM
Personally I'd find it fascinating - any chance you could reconsider?
I would find it fascinating, but that's cos I'm geeky.
Bryan
So do I. I've been trying to get the company I work for to consider XML/XSLT in our development process for years now. I'm very interested in any insights you may have about the topic.
This is exactly the sort of thing I come to this site to read. I sure don't want to read "Woody Harrelson for President" postings...that sort of thing sends me scurrying over to ESR...
Yes Yes YES!
I built my site using AxKit [http://www.axkit.org] XML, and XSLT. In a nutshell, pages are processed in a pipeline. XML or XSP (or even PHP outputting XML) -> XSLT(to html, to xhtml, to wep, to text) -> client side+CSS
It was not an easy road, but the benifits are awesome. TRUE seperation of data/programming/style. The ability to make wide sweeping changes quickly. Multi-Lingual versions and different media (print/screen/handheld) by adding different style sheets to the processing pipeline.
I'll never go back to non-xml based design for site design.
