| By :
Jamie Simpson
What is XML? The literal definition is; Extensible Markup Language. XML is designed to deliver documents in a flexible text format and structure. The XML is a set of encoding rules that apply to the structure of a document whether it is picture, words or data. Designed to be decoded with little human or computer intervention it can be sent across a wide range of hardware systems, applications and operating systems. It might sound a little similar to HTML but in fact they are designed for two different tasks; HTML is used for formatting and displaying data and XML is for transporting data. XML is in no way a replacement for HTML, one might say that XML is a software and hardware independent tool for carrying information. They are however both closely related to the SGML that has been used as the ISO (International Standardization Organization) markup language since 1986. XML is a lot more versatile than we may think. It does not have a restrictive set of tags like HTML therefore is not limited to the display of web pages. XML has an unlimited variety of tags meaning it can support limitless amount of applications. This gives a designer an opportunity to accomplish a variety of tasks with more ease. Because of its ease of use XML has become an extremely popular format since its introduction to the World Wide Web in 1998. In today's technology almost every modern programming language supports reading and writing XML and has given birth to massive amounts of interaction between retailers and consumers on the internet. It's simple and now universal language has enabled such tasks as a consumer connecting directly to a supplier's courier manifest to see how their order is doing. The uses of XML are becoming so important to our everyday academic activities that online libraries and tutoring modules are being formatted in XML so they can be more functional and interoperable. There are now even XML formats for word-processing, spreadsheets and databases. Websites are being upgraded to the latest XHTML which is the simpler XML version of HTML. I think we can generalise in a conclusion when we answer the question what is XML? By saying XML has been the long awaited language of simple documents and tasks that we need to send over the internet. It no longer needs massive amounts of knowledge regarding some tasks and should make the more advanced work of web designers and computer programmers a lot easier. We will no longer need to worry if the recipient of our work has the right formatting on their computer to receive the documentation neither shall we have to spend hours trying to decipher strange tags the average internet user understands.
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