Chapter 4. The Promise of XML

With this chapter, we begin discussing ebXML's background and underlying technology, starting with the Extensible Markup Language ( XML ). We will provide an overview of XML technologies, and discuss various features related to e-business, as well as its limitations for business purposes.This chapter is mostly technical in nature, to explain the raw technology itself and how the various components relate together. Our goal is to provide the reader enough of a sense of XML so that its overall use for business is clarified.The reader should view this chapter as a roadmap to the salient features of XML itself; however, it is not intended to be a tutorial in XML syntax.