On 9/30/05, Stefano Mazzocchi <stef...@apache.org> wrote:

Stefano,

you always have very interesting RTs. (They're pretty structured, too, so I wonder if you shouldn't tag them [PT] for Philosophical Thought or [HT] for Hard Thought.)

I think you're right on your observations, and wrong on your conclusion.

It is true that the web browser client is getting more and more sophisticated. Right now FireFox is a step ahead, but IE will catch up. They're not likely to regress anyway.

But consider this:

1. Even with AJAX etc. *something* has to produce all that XML that is to go out to the client. So just because we're seeing less and less need to use spiffy stylesheets to get the *visual* effects we want, having an XML processing engine is definitely something that's needed.

2. Given that:

+ Processing power is cheap. + Data transfer is expensive.

We have oodles of processing power and comparatively limited bandwidth (whether it be between CPU and RAM, or CPU and CPU over network).

So there will always be a need to server up things pre-digested for the client. Especially if the processing involves discarding lots of data.

So research-wise you may be right in the sense that the revolution has happened, and it is behind us. But we're still coming up with new ways to improve the post-revolution world. That may not be as sexy, but it is part of a technology maturing.

Actually, I'd say that of the things Cocoon brought the servlet world, the architecture and framework are the two most valuable parts. The fact that you can make this framework transform XML into neat HTML is neat and all, but it pales in comparison. And those two parts will not be obsolete for a long, long time.

/LS