The Extensible Markup Language (XML)

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XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. You probably are already familiar with another markup language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Both XML and HTML are descendants of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language. Surprisingly, SGML appeared as early as the 1970s, and was standardized in the 1980s.

The primary function of HTML is to present data in a browser. It was actually developed to organize data using hyperlinks , and the browser is a perfect vehicle for this purpose. However, HTML is meant to format and present data, not to verify it. HTML is a subset of SGML, and HTML did not include the data verification constructs provided by the SGML specification. The reason for this is that SGML is very complex and sophisticated, and implementing SGML completely can be quite expensive. At least early on, HTML did not concern itself with the data verification issues, among other things.

XML, on the other hand, does concern itself with data verification issues. XML was defined in 1997 as a subset of SGML. XML is much more strict with its format than HTML, and was designed to represent data. XML is controlled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and is not proprietary.

One of the philosophical problems with Java is that it is proprietary (owned by Sun Microsystems). The .NET framework is also proprietary (owned by Microsoft). The beauty of XML is that it is an open technology. In fact, it is one of the few technologies that has been embraced by most of the IT industry leaders : Sun, Microsoft, IBM, and so on. Thus, XML is not about to go away anytime soon.

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Object-Oriented Thought Process
Object-Oriented Thought Process, The (3rd Edition)
ISBN: 0672330164
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 164
Authors: Matt Weisfeld

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