Re: V4 database definition files

[saunders@aps.anl.gov]

At the risk of receiving a sound beating, I would make a marketing argument for XML config in EPICS V4 (even though I think there are a plethora of technical arguments as well). From my experience, virtually every new software product in the commercial and open-source sector is now configured using XML. Hypothetically speaking, looking at EPICS with fresh eyes, the first thing I would observe is: "ugh, it has its own proprietary configuration syntax".

If EPICS is targeting small facilities with a few IOC's, then using vi to manually edit proprietary config is ok by me. But if we are targeting significant facilities, I think we need to ramp up support for industry standards like XML.