The XML Files / WebDeveloper.com ®

Just One More Acronym: WDDX
Part 3

Stupid Solutions to Complexity

Because Sim made WDDX a generalized solution for describing recordsets, he realized that he had a way to move data not just between arbitrary ColdFusion apps, but also between ColdFusion and ASP apps or ASP apps and JavaScript-based server frameworks or Perl-based apps and JavaScript-capable browsers or any combination of any framework to any other framework.

Even better, while WDDX uses XML, it doesn't depend on namespaces, schemas and all of the other services that are still being pieced together to make arbitrary exchange of different structured data a seamless process. Nor does it use the elegant, but complex, set of similar technologies that have emerged to make it easier to communicate between different object-based systems by passing remote procedure calls (RPC) as XML. These solve different problems than WDDX.

WDDX is a way to bootstrap developers into the promised future of the XML-enabled Web without having to wait for all of the various vendors to deploy their implementations of the different XML services. Nor does it require buying a new application framework that understands XML natively. WDDX hooks into what they have today and is irrelevent to the internal workings of whatever a developer is using.

And it works because it's stupid. Fiendishly, devilishly and brilliantly stupid.

Taking its cue from the reasons that the Web took off in the first place, Allaire is giving away WDDX. WDDX is too simple to be a product. You can find more information on it at WDDX.org, which right now points to a page on Allaire's Web site with links to its resources and third parties that have already started experimenting with the technology.

Next time I'll walk through how WDDX works and provide some samples of how it can be used.