ANN: xsdbXML release with C#/.NET port Part I: Announcement ==================== There is a new release of xsdbXML which provides bugfixes to the Python implementation and also provides a completely separate implementation in C#/.NET.
The xsdb framework provides a flexible and well defined infrastructure to allow tabular data to be published, retrieved, and combined over the Internet. Read more and download at http://xsdb.sourceforge.net Part II: Discussion =================== The C# implementation is primarily a transliteration of the Python implementation. I hope to also do a java transliteration of the C# code. Some brief observations: - Development: Using python for the first implementation was the right way to go because it made it easier to backtrack and refactor the implementation. If I had tried this in C# backtracking would have been much more painful. Testing Python code, especially during development, is also much easier in part because you can write {"a": [1,2,3], "b": MyClass("argument")} in a few keystrokes whereas a C# analogue runs to many lines. Interestingly, however, the C# port exposed several nasty bugs in untested code paths of the python implementation (incorrect calling sequences) because of C# static typing, even before the C# code was running or even compiling. For the most part the transliteration was straightforward, except where the python implementation leans on the python expression parser (the parser had to be "hand rolled" in C#). - Libraries: The python http services are more "bare bones" than the .NET libraries and this is a *GOOD* *THING* (tm). The .NET libraries seem to do all kinds of nice things under the surface where I can't influence their behavior (even in principal because of the type system information hiding). The python implementation pretty much allows me to modify any part of the implementation, and the default does as little as possible. My reservations about the C# http services didn't actually cause problems in this case, but it made me nervous. On the other hand it's nice in C# to not have to guess about which XML library to use. As any python programmer can attest it is not fun trying to decide which of several implementations is the best and will stay alive, etcetera. I just arbitrarily chose the one I knew already, but I really should switch to something else, dunno what. In C# there is only one choice. - Environment What can I say. VS/.NET is really nice and there is nothing close in Python AFAIK. - Conclusion Don't have any. I'm just making comments :). Thanks for your attention -- Aaron Watters === % if I had a ( for every $ bush spent how many ('s would I have? too many ('s -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
