XML is a concise language that uses syntax tags to identify data in a file, making it easy for programs to extract and manipulate. It differs from HTML, which only determines how material should be presented on a web page. XSL is the equivalent of CSS for XML and can transform data into other formats. XML is expected to replace HTML as the preferred language due to its flexibility.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a less complex and more concise dialect of the larger and more complex Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Simply put, this language uses syntax tags to identify various types of data in a file. For example:
XML makes it very easy for various programs to extract data because the tags conform to particular patterns. Above we see a data model with 7 elements:
Client (parent element), contains 6 nested elements: name, street, city, state, zip code, and phone. Name: XML-aware programs know that this field contains the name of a person or company. Street: this field will contain an address .City: You will find the city here.State: The abbreviated 2-letter state code.Zip Code: The 5-digit zip code.Telephone: The telephone number.
A DTD (Document Type Definition) can be used to define the data model or content of each of the elements. A DTD is a way to define the structure or tree of an XML document. A DCD (Document Content Description), DDML (Document Definition Markup Language), SAX (Simple API for XML), and XSCHEMA are others.
While the simplified example above only suggests the basics of this language, it should already be clear how it differs from HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The tags used in HTML determine how the material should be presented on a web page, with no indication as to what the material is. Manipulating or reusing the data within an HTML file for any other purpose is impractical. However, the data contained in a web page written in XML can be manipulated, extracted from various database systems and recycled.
When using HTML to create web pages, style sheets are often used. Formally known as cascading style sheets, a CSS adds elements of style to an HTML web page.
Web pages can also be written in XML. In this case the equivalent of CSS is XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language), implemented in the same way.
The XSL actually performs two functions. Contains instructions for XML-aware browsers on how to render code for graphical purposes, but also contains instructions for transforming data into other formats, called XLST. XSLT can generate a different structure file from the original. This is particularly useful in areas such as e-commerce, for example, where customer input such as name, credit card number, dollar amount, etc. is sent through a number of system programs in payment processing. The transform function of XSLT is unhampered by rendering needs and is solely concerned with successfully moving data between networks and programs for computing purposes. In an age where information exchange is so in demand, XML is an obvious choice over HTML.
XML, created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is part of a large family of markup languages and is defined as a metalanguage, a language that describes other languages. One of the W3C’s goals was to render XML “optionless” so that it remains pure, unlike HTML which has many different conventions and as a result is rendered differently on various browsers, making it difficult to present data uniformly .
As of March 2005 tests released by W3C
revealed that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 SP2 had limited XML capabilities, reportedly using its own flavor of the language which may not always conform to established standards. Netscape had good compatibility with some issues in the 8.0 beta, while Firefox and Mozilla had the best results of the free browsers, with XML rendering capability fully implemented and 100% compatible in all browser versions available to date.
Since XML pages provide much more flexibility than HTML pages, it is expected to replace HTML as the preferred language. For more information, you can visit the W3C official site. There are also online tutorials and many books available. Learning the language may require a raise, but experts predict the investment is worth the time.
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