Innovation. Correctness. Soundness.

Edsel, the Easy Data Structure Expression Language, is a superior alternative to XML for representing general graph-like data structures. It is superior in two ways:

• Edsel is not a markup language. Its syntax is very simple, since it is not encumbered with the somewhat baroque generality that XML inherited from SGML. A complete Edsel parser consists of a 6K-byte Java jar file.
• Unlike XML, Edsel is not strictly hierarchical; it allows the expression of general graph relationships easily and naturally.

    -Edsel { -version '1.0'; }

    (This is a simple example of Edsel.)

    John
    {
        first-name 'John';
        last-name 'Smith';
    |
        wife Mary;
    }

    Mary
    {
        first-name 'Mary';
        last-name 'Smith';
    |
        husband John;
    }