What is XML

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What is XML?

(February 2004)

Question:
What's the difference between HTML and XML? I'm asking because someone asked if our data could be available in XML format.

Answer: Your question is similar to the question "What's the difference between .doc and .dbf files?" But it is far from "Basic."

HTML is a standard for formatting text and graphics, similar to Word, but with the whole internet thing behind it. There is a movement to convert HTML documents to XML: XHTML.

XML is a means of demarking datafields within a file. Rather than pipes, tabs or commas to delineate data, tags (similar to HTML tags) are used:
<Record>
<Field><name>FirstName</name><value>Bill</value></Field>
</Record>
<Record>
<Field><name>FirstName</name><value>John</value></Field>
</Record>

XML also comes with a suite of technologies, most notable is XSL. It allows XML documents to be formatted and displayed in web browsers. Any "well formed" XML document can be formatted with XSL. The problem is that XSL is extremely complicated to use for the simplest cases.

XML is marketed as the saviour of modern computing because it is supposed to free us from proprietary database standards, such as Access, DBase, Paradox and any other way a company decides to encode its data in a file without telling other people about it.

In my opinion
===
That's the hype. The truth is that the XML standard is so flexible and simple to implement that it has resulted in even more fragmentation within the industry.

While the structure of an XML file is well defined, the naming conventions of the tags and structuring of the data within it are only standardized for special transactions in some industries such as Health and Insurance.

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