Chapter 2. XML concepts for Office users Introductory Discussion Virtually every influential company in the software industry is promoting XML as the next step in the Web's evolution. Why? Because it enables information sharing, and that is the key to electronic commerce, application integration, and many other desirable things. And now Microsoft has bet the future of the world's most successful office suite on XML. How can these companies be so confident about something so new? More important: how can you be sure that your time invested in learning and using XML will be profitable? We can all safely bet on XML because its technology is in fact very old and has been proven effective over several decades and thousands of projects. The easiest way to understand the central ideas of XML is to go back to their source, the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). XML is, in fact, a streamlined subset of SGML, so SGML's track record is XML's as well. SGML enables information interchange within and between some of the world's largest companies. Its extensible markup technology was first used for document processing, but over time it has become clear that data and documents are the same thing! To be precise, documents are the interchangeable form of data. If you understand where XML comes from, you'll better understand what it is, how to use it, and where it and the desktop are going. |