RE: Re: New to the list- intro

["Ian Lowe" <ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Welcome to the list Ake,

I'm one of the "splitters" (for all you monty python fans) ;)
from the
xPL Project, discussion group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ukha_xpl/

We share some of your concerns about parsing complex xAP messages, and a
few of the differences between the protocols come from that desire for a
simpler way of doing things - (like much more fixed header structures
for example).

That being said, I actually agree with Patrick - "proper" XML
would not,
I feel, have been the best choice for an HA protocol - we also make
extensive use of XML in the tools supporting xPL, but the message format
itself is not XML.

The distributed decision making you describe is very much xAP's
philosophy (unless the BCS Mapper is a move to centralised decision
making - Mark?) whilst smaller, more tightly regulated messages is
ours...

I'd *normally* suggest looking at xPL but in this case, I think you are
a long way down the design road - and from a quick look at the VSCP, you
are not kidding when you say Very Simple!!

I'm actually wondering more how you can achieve the degree of
interoperability that xPL/xAP are looking for with only 8 bytes of data
in a packet? Are the actual messages delivered across multiple packets?

Ian.