Why XML for future work?

Current HAMSTER client and server protocol in exchanging requests and responses is SO primitive. So 'bulok'-y.

Strings are upstreamed with the following format.

[response/request code]:[command1]:[command2]...[commandN]

Once received, they are tokenized.
Then, conversion is needed. Integer.parseInt() and so on.

But with XML...

XML as a Message Format

FROM: http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xmljava/

One of the major uses of XML is for exchanging data between heterogenous systems. Given almost any collection of data, it’s straightforward to design some XML markup that fits it. Since XML is natively supported on essentially any platform of interest, you can send data encoded in such an XML application from point A to point B without worrying about whether point A and point B agree on how many bytes there are in a float, whether ints are big endian or little endian, whether strings are null delimited or use an initial length byte, or any of the myriad of other issues that arise when moving data between systems. As long as both ends of the connection agree on the XML application used, they can exchange information without worrying about what software produced the data. One side can use Perl and the other Java. One can use Windows and the other Unix. One can run on a mainframe and the other on a Mac. The document can be passed over HTTP, e-mail, NFS, BEEP, Jabber, or sneakernet. Everything except the XML document itself can be ignored.


Sigh.