IBM Version 5 manual XML concepts, Background

1.1 XML concepts

In today’s technology, XML is starting to becoming a key piece of software infrastructure. The main idea is extremely simple. It is a language like HTML and is text based, but is rigidly enforced, and therefore, can be built upon easily. XML documents may use a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema.

XML was designed to describe data and to focus on the data, unlike HTML which was designed to display data. It was created to structure and store data.

1.2 Background

The Internet has had amazing growth during the last 8 years. However, in the last four years, its usage has increase exponentially. In the first 4 years, its foundations were laid, and in the later 4 years, a number of technologies have evolved around it. Today, it is in the mainstream of life, and everyday, every talk revolves around its usage. Nowadays, advertising mandates that a Web page address be displayed and e-mail is considered official documents.

This growth has been fueled by many factors. The cost of personal computers has decreased dramatically, network technologies are more widespread and cheaper, schools are emphasizing computer literacy at an early age. Its ease of use has been its biggest contributor. Access to the Internet is as easy as logging through the phone line and the local area network. Computer education is now part of the school curriculum at the primary level, so that today’s youngsters do not lose out on the this new revolution.

Tim Berners-Lee, who leads the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the inventor of HTML and HTTP, could not have envisaged this growth. Even, computer giants like IBM and Microsoft had to realign their technical and business philosophies to cater for the explosive growth. To not follow, meant to be left behind. It would be true to say, we cannot envisage what the Internet will bring in the next five years, only to say that there will be new ways we will be doing business and enjoying leisure.

This ability to manage large amount of simple and complex data in many forms, without limitations, and display in a readable format, can be based for this universal data format. As we know, this can be provided by the eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

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