Chapter 18: XML

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Overview

With much fanfare, Extensible Markup Language (XML) has emerged rapidly as a new approach to delivering structured data over the Web. Numerous languages have been developed using XML. Many are starting to become well-known by average Web developers including RSS (Really Simple Syndication), WML (Wireless Markup Language), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), and others. Of course XHTML, the topic of much of this book, is probably the most widely understood XML-based language. Yet given the widespread success of traditional HTML, you may wonder , why do we need something else? What does XML really offer the typical Web developer? This chapter attempts to answer that question and explains both the practical uses and the theoretical value of XML.

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