[xquery-talk] XML/XQuery academic conferences ?

[Michael Kay]

On 13/10/2011 10:19, John Snelson wrote:
> Like Ron says, I would point out that XML is still very much alive and 
> thriving in areas where it's indispensable for understanding 
> unstructured data[1]. This is possibly a more mundane, "solved" 
> problem from an academic perspective - but it doesn't mean that 
> there's not massive business value in working with data like that.
>
Clearly the peak for any technology as far as researchers is concerned 
comes years before the peak for product developers, which in turn comes 
years before the peak for usage. Most of the money in software is made 
long after the technology has ceased to be fashionable.

It's a difficult question for research. XML is intellectually a mess; 
many mistakes have been made in areas such as namespaces and schemas; 
there must be a strong temptation if you're an academic to ignore the 
mess and devise something cleaner to work with. But if you take a 
broader perspective, building effective IT systems is all about using 
components that aren't all shiny and new, and if you're going to do 
research that helps us to build more effective IT systems then you can't 
hide your head in the sand and wish that problem away.

Michael Kay
Saxonica