Chapter 12. Objects and XML: Portable Data

Object-oriented languages have had a strong showing in recent years. Objects have become a major technology in the programming language space. Objects have also made major headway in the definition and movement of data as well. Much excitement has been generated over the past several years regarding the portability of code. Much of Java's success was due to the fact that it was highly portable across multiple platforms. The bytecodes produced by Java could be executed on various platforms, as long as the system had a Java virtual machine loaded. The .NET framework provides portability across various languages. The assemblies produced by C# .NET can be used within Visual Basic .NET applications, or any other .NET language for that matter. Perhaps in the future there will be a programming language that will be portable across both languages and platforms.

Although portable languages are powerful tools, they are really only half of the equation. The programs that are written using these languages must process data, and this data must be turned into information. It is this information that drives businesses. Information is the other half of the portability equation.

XML is a standard mechanism for defining and transporting data between potentially disparate systems. By using object-oriented languages such as Java and C# in conjunction with an object-oriented data definition language such as XML, moving data between various destinations is much more efficient and secure. XML provides a mechanism for independent applications to share data.