<p>We need is to push sports data to a number of different client types such as ajax/javascript, flash, .NET and Mac/iPhone. Data updates need to only be near-real time with delays of several seconds being acceptable. </p>

<p>How to best accomplish this?</p>

[{'answer_id': 50857, 'author': '17 of 26', 'author_id': 2284, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2284', 'pm_score': -1, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>I would go with XML.  XML is widely supported on all platforms and has lots of libraries and tools available for it.  And since it's text, there are no issues when you pass it between platforms.</p>\n\n<p>I know JSON is another alternative, but I'm not familiar enough with it to know whether or not to recommend it in this case.</p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 204085, 'author': 'Sire', 'author_id': 2440, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2440', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>The best solution (if we\'re talking .NET) seem to be to use WCF and streaming http. The client makes the first http connection to the server at port 80, the connection is then kept open with a streaming response that never ends. (And if it does it reconnects).</p>\n\n<p>Here\'s a sample that demonstrates this: <a href="http://blogs.thinktecture.com/buddhike/archive/2007/05/23/414851.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Streaming XML</a>. </p>\n\n<p>The solution to pushing through firewalls: <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/drnick/archive/2006/10/20/keeping-connections-open-in-iis.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer" title="Keeping connections open in IIS">Keeping connections open in IIS</a></p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/50831', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/-1/']