Conclusion

In this chapter we discussed many aspects of XML and why it is a very important technology within the IT community. It is rare when many major players in the IT market buy into the same standard, but this has happened in the case of XML.

From the object-oriented perspective, you should come away from this chapter with the understanding that object-oriented development goes far beyond OO languages, and encompasses the data as well. Because data is the fundamental part of information systems, it is important to design object-oriented systems that focus on the data. In today's business environment, moving data from one point to another is of paramount importance.

There are many levels of investigation you can visit when it comes to XML. This book is about concepts, and by the end of this chapter you should have a good general idea of what XML is used for, as well as some of the tools that are used. Another level that was mentioned briefly in this chapter was that of the style-sheets. By using cascading style sheets and other technologies you can better format your XML documents.