Is XML still rated useful for EDA?

Hi,
when looking for a way to compare module interfaces in different netlisting
formats, spectre, spice, vhdl etc. I touched the thought of using XML as a
common intermediate format. A quick search on google indicated that there
were a lot of activities around 2000 to define something useful with XML as
an interchange format. My question is probably directed towards the
insiders of Cadence as they know what's the talk there.

I will probably have to roll my own set of XML tags for my application, but
if somebody knows about a nice set of tags that can be used to describe
interfaces, entities and instantiations I would be happy to know.

 

Markup formats were defined by librarians. It was meant to be a way to
add "meta" to content stored as files/directories or some limited
database. With the tremendous success of the www and html, these got so
much exposure that DTDs and XML were seen as a panacea. You can see for
instance that Laurent Lemaitre used XLST or Xpath or some XML based
technology to write his veriloga to spice compiler. Almost any language
has a nice interface to XML (is there a SKILL library for that ?). The
oregano schematic editor (RIP) also used it. Not to mention microshgft
involvement, or the GUI language of mozilla.

Conclusion: none. XML has been already used so much that it will not be
a dead end if you choose it. But if you don t feel at home with it...


BTW: who is using OpenAccess daily ?

 

Yeah, but If I make up my own tags and xml structure then I am more or less
f***** the day cadence suddenly announces that they use xml instead of cdl,
lef, def, sdf or whatever. But just sit around and wait for that to happen
is also quite frustrating. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you
don't.

Regards,

 

This is the big problem with XML. It seems to be described in various circles as
a panacea to all sorts of problems, but I can never work out why it's so useful
- the syntax of the language is a tiny part of the portability of a format
compared with the grammar (or the schema, whatever you want to call it).

Andrew.