Re: XML and JSON

I missed the original question, but as Joe says, actual benchmarks are
hard to come by. I think a lot depends on whether you're talking about
using the protocol over LAN (internal / highspeed) or over internet. And
even with internet, if it's all high-speed it probably matters less. If
you're concerned about people on the far side of slow lines, then every
byte might count. And keep in mind, a T1 can be (very) slow speed if you
put enough people behind it. :)

For us the decision is usually made this way (it's just how I do it :-)
)

If this is a true webservice with WSDL and all that, than the payloads
are XML, and usually with children not attributes. As Joe mentioned,
it's definitely "efficiency challenged" (nice phrase), but it's also the
simplest, and there's something to be said for simplicity when working
between machines and technologies.

If the response is for an Ajax request then we go the JSON approach. Not
only because the size is (typically) smaller, but because it's really
nice to be able to rehydrate a complete object graph on the browser with
a simple eval statement (or in our case Prototype's
Ajax.Response.responseJSON property)

-Walden