Chapter 10: Working with XML Data in Excel and Access

Overview

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a set of technologies that allows documents and data to be stored and shared in a file format that does not depend on a particular software application or computer operating system. With XML, organizations can exchange text-based data over the Web, through e-mail, or within a corporate intranet. An XML file’s contents can be viewed, transformed, and analyzed regardless of the software applications an organization uses. For example, a manufacturing company might frequently order supplies from a vendor. The manufacturing company and the vendor agree on an XML format, or XML schema, they’ll use to exchange their data, and now the manufacturing company can use Microsoft Excel 2002 to submit purchase orders to the vendor through e-mail. Using the agreed-upon XML schema, the manufacturing company need not be concerned about which software applications or computer operating systems the vendor uses to process the purchase orders. Microsoft Office XP is the first version of Office that enables XML-based data to be viewed, analyzed, and exchanged without undue modification of the original XML data.

Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn

• What XML is and how it can facilitate the exchange of data because of its nonproprietary nature.

• How to interpret XML data.

• How to work with XML data in Microsoft Excel 2002 and Microsoft Access 2002.

Note

The information in this chapter applies to Microsoft Office XP (specifically, Microsoft Excel 2002 and Microsoft Access 2002) only.