For those of 
you that may be curious about how EXI will compare to WCF's binary XML and 
FastInfoset, we posted a set of 
graphs which show the compactness of AgileDelta's Efficient XML (the basis 
for the W3C EXI standard) versus Fast 
Infoset. See http://www.agiledelta.com/product_efx_fi_comp.html 
 
The data behind 
the graphs comes from independent tests run by the W3C using the EXI Working 
Group's test framework. As you'll see in the graphs, EXI exceeds or meets the 
FI's compactness regardless of whether schema information is used to encode the 
data or not. And Efficient XML was one of the fastest binary XML implementations 
tested.

Cheers,
 
-Rich 



  From: "Alexander Philippou" <alex@n...> 
  To: "'Michael Champion'" <mc@x...>,"'[Public XML 
  Dev]'" <xml-dev@l...> 
  Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 15:57:38 +0300 <!---Head-of-Message-End--><!---Head-Body-Sep-Begin-->

<!---Head-Body-Sep-End--><!---Body-of-Message-->Michael Champion wrote:
> If performance/scalability/bandwidth conservation is the primary value 
> to consider, use whatever technology your platform offers that is 
> optimized for the application scenario you have.  For web services on 
> .NET, that's WCF's format.

No, Fast Infoset is considerably more compact than WCF's format (again see
http://www.noemax.com/products/fastinfoset/size_comparisons.html) so FI is a
better choice for improving WS performance. And it conforms to an ISO/ITU-T
standard, and can be used with any WCF transport (Http, NetTcp, Soap/Tcp),
and is interoperable with Java and other platforms. IMO for anyone willing
to spend some $ to buy a component it makes much more sense to use FI
instead of WCF's format.

> I do know that we don't consider the WCF wire format a rival to FI or 
> EXI in interop scenarios.  We do want to make .NET the best platform 
> on which to develop and deploy web services, but XML parsing 
> efficiency is a small part of that, and the framework can easily 
> support FI or EXI if one of them emerges as an interoperability 
> standard.

FI not being shipped within .NET does not reduce the fact that FI actually
is supported as an integral part of the framework. .NET is exactly that -- a
framework -- and as such it is open to new technologies being plugged into
it without forcing them on MS. Maybe it would be simpler for MS to just
encourage and assist other vendors to provide additional technologies for
.NET. This would relieve MS from standards fighting and would also help .NET
move forward faster.

Alexander