XML As a File Format

Publishing Versus Data

Most people classify XML applications as either publishing or data applications. Publishing applications are related to Web publishing, printing, and email. Data applications deal with databases, application integration, and e-commerce.

This is a sound distinction at the modeling and architectural levels. You would not want to design an e-commerce solution in the same way you would design a publishing solution.

Yet, at the technical level, the distinction blurs. In fact, I have often found that to benefit from XML, you must think creatively, outside the two boxes.

Let's look at a few examples. Chapter 3, "Electronic Forms," presents an XML editor, which is a publishing tool. However, it is used in a forms-based application, and forms are typically classified as database applications. So, Chapter 3 uses a publishing tool in a non-publishing context with great success.

Another example is XSLT. XSLT is a style sheet language ”originally a publishing technology. Yet, as Chapter 7, "Write an e-Commerce Server," demonstrates , it works very well for data applications such as e-commerce.

Conversely, Chapter 8, "Organize Teamwork Between Developers and Designers," uses a data solution (servlets) for a publishing application (Web site publishing).

This is what I mean by thinking outside the two boxes. Knowing whether you are building a publishing or data application is useful, but these distinctions do not necessarily hold at the technical level.

In my experience, the maximum benefits are often derived at the edges ”when you take a solution that was originally developed in one context and apply it in the other context.

To me, this is what makes XML powerful and attractive. It is a flexible technology that works well across a broad range of applications.