XML Tutorial
XML is a markup language. The mighty ones who created this acronym cheated a little, as
XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. XML was released in the late 90's and received a great amount
of hype. The XML standard was created by W3C to provide an easy to use and
standardized way to store self-describing data (self-describing data is data that describes both its content
and its structure).
Communication Between Application
XML is nothing by itself. XML is more of a "common ground" standard. The main benefit of XML is that you
can take data from a program like MSSQL(Microsoft SQL), convert it into XML, then share that XML with a slough
of other programs, platforms, etc. Each of these receiving platforms can then convert the XML into a structure
the platform uses normally and presto! you have just communicated between two potentially very
different platforms!
What makes XML truly powerful is the acceptance and hard work done by
all those who work with databases, programming, office application, etc.
It is because of this hard work that the tools exist to do these conversion from whatever
platform into standardized XML data or convert XML into a format used by that platform.
In the past, attempts at creating a standardized format for data that could be interpreted by many
different platforms (i.e. different applications) failed miserably where XML has largely succeeded.
Applications of XML
Although there are countless of applications that use XML, here are a few examples
of the current platforms and applications that are making use of this technology.
- Cell Phones - XML data is sent to some cell phones, which is then
formatted by the specification of the cell phone software designer to display text, images and even
play sounds!
- File Converters - Many applications have been written to convert
existing documents into the XML standard. An example is a PDF to XML converter.
- VoiceXML - Converts XML documents into an audio format so that you can
listen to an XML document.
Recommended Prior Knowledge
We recommend that you know how to open/edit/save a file in Notepad. If you would
like a walkthrough on basic file editing, follow our
First Web Site Walkthrough that covers all that mumbo jumbo. In addition
to file editing, a basic knowledge or exposure to HTML will help.
Although this information is not required to start this tutorial, it will
make the learning process easier.
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