XML

XML is an acronym for Extensible Markup Language. As a markup language it is very similar to HTML and was originally designed to describe data.

XML utilizes a DTD or Document Type Definition or an XML Schema in order to describe data and with these it is designed to be self-descriptive as well. It is a W3C recommendation. It is important to note here that XML is not necessarily a replacement for HTML and that XML has been designed to describe data and to focus on what data is. It was originally developed in order to structure, store and send information. Therefore, it can be considered as a complement to HTML and as its replacement. Furthermore XML is free and extensible. Since the XML tags are not predefined; the user needs to invent their own tags. With XML, the author is able to define their own tags as well as their own document structure. Over the years, XML is almost ubiquitous and the XML standard has quickly developed and adopted by large number of software vendors worldwide.

Uses of XML

XML is highly utilizable for a wide variety of applications and is widely used worldwide. It has a variety of uses for e-business, Web and portable applications. In Web Publishing; XML enables the creation of interactive pages, allows customization of web pages and allows the creation of e-commerce applications more intuitive. With XML, the user needs to store the data just once and then render that content for different viewers or devices based on style sheet processing using an Extensible Style Language (XSL)/XSL Transformation (XSLT) processor. XML also enables web searching and automates web tasks. The type of information contained within a document, is defined by XML and this facilitates search results when searching the web. Furthermore, XML offers a standard procedure to get information thereby facilitating the usage, storage, transmission, and display of data for various applications and devices. Besides this, XML also makes it easier to express metadata in a portable, reusable format. It is also useful in e-business applications. It makes EDI or Electronic Data Interchange more accessible for interchange of information, business-to-business transactions, and business-to-consumer transactions. Moreover, it offers structured and portable information for wireless computing devices like PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants), cell phones and others. Today, XML allows users to aggregate information from various sources and enterprise applications in a process called information aggregation. Most enterprise applications are able to import and export data in XML. Another positive benefit of XML that most organizations have been able capitalize on is called semantic integration. Companies capitalize on the labels related to each XML information item, to process the information in a way that is sensitive to the meaning.

Advantages of XML

The greatest advantage of XML is that it is highly readable and comprehensible and that it utilizes human language and not computer language. Moreover, it is easier to code XML as compared to HTML. Furthermore, it is completely portable as well as completely compatible with Java.