XML Alyssa Roberts

What is XML? Extensible Markup Language Specification to creating custom mark-up languages Simplified version of SGML, originally made for people with semantic constraints Extensible – allows user to define mark-up elements SGML – Standard Generalized Markup Language

What does XML do? XML is used for sharing structured data Encoding documents (converting information into symbols to be communicated) Serializing data (converting an object to be stored as a file or transferred across a network) Applications can be implemented in XML RSS, MathML, GraphML, MusicXML

What’s it used for? In business, XBRL (based on XML) Transfers data easily Reporting financial results Some Banks use it Web Publishing, single source of data XBRL Extensible Business Reporting Language

Continued Government documentation, maps Airplane/car manufacturers maintenance booklets Common format for document storage/processing Supports Unicode and is based on international standards

Examples RSS feeds (used to publish frequently updated works) News Websites (CNN) OpenOfficeAbiWord Apple’s iWork Applications

Advantages It’s universal It’s based on SGML which has been around since 1986 so there’s a lot of experience and software available The structure is suitable for most documents

Advantages Can be updated incrementally Strict syntax and parsing requirements make it simple, efficient, and consistent It’s platform independent, so it’s immune to changes in technology and will work on any computer regardless of OS

Compared to HTML XML is just data, whereas HTML is about creating pages and also how they should look XML has nothing to do with the appearance of what you’re working with It’s just data that you can manipulate and put where you want

Essentially… XML makes data transfer and storage much easier It has all the data in one place for you It can represent common computer science data structures (records, lists, trees) Efficient and simple