Washington Technologies White Papers
What is XML?
B. Tommie Usdin, President, Mulberry Technologies, Inc.
Deborah A. Lapeyre, Vice-President, Mulberry Technologies, Inc.
XML is a new standard for creating, sharing, and
browsing documents on the Internet. The non-proprietary XML
standard is under development right now by the W3C
(World-Wide Web Consortium). The XML standard has
three parts: the language specification is a subset of SGML;
the linking specification provides tags for hyperlinking; and the style
specification will allow control of display and formatting. XML
is a leaner, meaner, stripped-down version of SGML
optimized for use on the Web. Every valid XML document
will be a valid SGML document, but XML
is an SGML subset, using only the most commonly-used
features of SGML.
To use HTML, tags are embedded in data (W3C
provides the tag set) that drive hypertext links and browser formatting.
Unlike HTML, SGML and XML
let users create their own organization- or industry-specific tags and use
them, not just to make hypertext links work and display on browsers, but
for document security, version control, context-specific searching, and
much, much more. The tags are under user control and can be designed to
meet user needs.
Will XML Replace SGML?
No! But for some organizations with relatively simple data requirements,
yes. Many other organizations will create information in SGML
and translate to XML for the web, the way they are
using HTML now.
Will XML Replace HTML?
No! But for manufacturing and defense-contract data, financial data,
confidential or secret material, or anything complex -- organizations are
already feeling HTML confining. They need the power,
the SGML-power, that XML can
provide.
Will XML Replace PDF (Page
Description Format)?
No! XML and PDF don't perform
the same function. PDF preserves the image (the exact
look and feel) of formatted pages. That's great for archiving. But,
increasingly, both information display and information interchange demand
more than just pages. A page shown on the screen is not the same thing as
a dynamic searchable, resizeable document containing reuseable and
repurposable information. PDF is a great final format
for static material that never has to do anything else. And SGML
and XML applications will continue to produce
PDF in addition to full-text searchable databases,
HTML, and other display formats.
© Mulberry Technologies, Inc. 1997
|