slide 9

Benefits of XML (in general)

(from Software AG, a vendor of XML tools)

• Simplicity
  Information coded in XML is easy to read and understand,
  plus it can be processed easily by computers.
• Openness
  XML is a W3C standard,
  endorsed by software industry market leaders.
• Extensibility
  There is no fixed set of tags.
  New tags can be created as they are needed.
• Self-description
  XML documents can be stored without [schemas] because they contain meta data; any XML tag can possess an unlimited number of attributes such as author or version.
• Contains machine-readable context information
  Tags, attributes and element structure provide context information ... opening up new possibilities for highly efficient search engines, intelligent data mining, agents, etc.
• Separates content from presentation
  XML tags describe meaning not presentation.
  The look and feel of an XML document can be controlled by XSL stylesheets, allowing the look of a document (or of a complete Web site) to be changed without touching the content of the document.
  Multiple views or presentations of the same content are easily rendered.
• Supports multilingual documents and Unicode
  This is important for the internationalization of applications.
• Facilitates the comparison and aggregation of data
  The tree structure of XML documents allows documents to be compared and aggregated efficiently element by element.
• Can embed multiple data types
  XML documents can contain any possible data type — from multimedia data (image, sound, video) to active components (Java applets, ActiveX).
• Can embed existing data
  Mapping existing data structures like file systems or relational databases to XML is simple....
• Provides a “one-server view” for distributed data
  XML documents can consist of nested elements that are distributed over multiple remote servers. XML is currently the most sophisticated format for distributed data — the World Wide Web can be seen as one huge XML database.
• Rapid adoption by industry
  Software AG, IBM, Sun, Microsoft, Netscape, DataChannel, SAP ...