Now Playing: Opinions and Speculations
I'm going to walk through the evolution of the programming languages based on XML (which we know as Emily) over the weekend. Why? Because I like the subject immensely.
I'll take it slow so you don't overload your fuses. As you work up to the idea of using XML as a programming language you have to begin walking out of the box XML was constructed to provide. XML was first developed as a markup language for describing data meaning the content of the data and the format of the data.
The XML form allowed data to be written down on something as simple as a napkin and passed to another human who would be able to use what you've written.
Because XML was adopted to be a standard universal language this allowed anyone to describe a body of data using XML tags and that description could be passed to anyone and the data in its intended content and form could be replicated and used.
Once you had a copy of that XML representation in electronic form you could pass that representation around to machines and the machines would be able to use what was written.
This facility was the only original use of XML intended.
But the Emily patent application described a third use of XML to enable the original content and format use to be included in a representation of programming code. Thus the VCSY Emily inventor said XML could work as a programming language in and of itself using a runtime built to execute the XML content format and code statements.
That work has continued from the patent application date to current real time. There are now numerous uses of XML as a programming code in different depths and different uses. But we'll focus our study in particular on the history of industry developments influencing Microsoft's adoption of languages presaged by VCSY's Emily to be able to put together a picture of the future Microsoft engineers envision.
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Three things to know about the current state in Microsoft of the issues touching the Emily concept::
First:
Microsoft's F# language is a complete re-implementation of a Caml-like language.
Second:
CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language) is an XML based markup language used with the family of Microsoft SharePoint technologies (Windows Sharepoint Services and Office SharePoint Server).
Third:
CAML allows developers to both construct and display data. Microsoft refers to elements used to construct data as "Definition" elements and elements used to display data as "Rendering" elements.
Realtime:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Microsoft-F-Hits-All-the-Right-Notes-With-Programmers-324865/
Microsoft F# Hits All the Right Notes With Programmers
By: Darryl K. Taft
2011-09-09
F# is a functional language that came out of Microsoft Research (MSR). The language came on the scene in 2007, though Microsoft researcher Don Syme had launched the project many years earlier. Microsoft describes F# as a succinct, expressive and efficient functional and object-oriented language for .NET that helps developers write simple code to solve complex problems.
As described on its Microsoft Research page, F# is: “A simple and pragmatic language, and has particular strengths in data-oriented programming, parallel I/O programming, parallel CPU programming, scripting and algorithmic development. It lets you access a huge .NET library and tools base and comes with a strong set of Visual Studio development tools. F# combines the advantages of typed functional programming with a high-quality, well-supported modern runtime system.”
In a blurb on F#, TIOBE said: “Finally, a new functional programming language has hit the top 20. Most people thought that hot functional languages such as Scala (#66), Clojure (#107), Haskell (#35) or Erlang (#48) would be the ones that would be the first to compete seriously with the mother of all functional languages, Lisp. But it appears to be Microsoft language F#. The recent rise in popularity of F# comes as no surprise. Apart from being a nicely designed language, F# is available in the latest version of Microsoft's Visual Studio (2010)."
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Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_Application_Markup_Language
CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language) is an XML based markup language used with the family of Microsoft SharePoint technologies (Windows Sharepoint Services and Office SharePoint Server). Unlike plain XML, CAML contains specific groups of tags to both define and display (render) data.
In general, almost all XML files in a SharePoint installation utilize CAML. Specifically CAML is very important in site and list definitions, via the ONET.XML files as well as other corresponding XML files. Here the CAML is used to define what elements exist on an instance of a site, and the display of these sub-elements, while the ASPX files are used to define how to arrange and display those elements to form the site.
Posted by Portuno Diamo
at 3:14 PM EST
