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Our first, 'IT Question of the Week,' comes from our very own Jessica (Geek by Association). Jess asks, “What is XML? I had to use it for a project but I do not understand what exactly it is." Well Jess, this is a good question, let’s try to answer it for you.
XML is short for, Extensible Markup Language. Much like HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), it is used to describe things. Where HTML describes how a webpage should look, XML describes how data should be interpreted. The goal is to create rules for how a set of data should be formed so that multiple applications or web pages can read it.
Some common uses of XML you may have seen are RSS feeds (both RSS and Atom), AJAX (Asynchronous Java and XML), and the latest Microsoft Office file formats (version 2007 and later). Chances are, you have never seen the XML, but it is there behind the scenes.
XML makes RSS feeds readable by many different sources. If you have an email client, such as Outlook or Thunderbird, it comes packaged with an RSS reader. If you instead use a webmail service, they likely have a way to check RSS as well. XML defines how data is organized for use by these different RSS readers.
AJAX is not a new technology; it is merely a newer technique of using old technologies. AJAX became popular in 2005 when Google unveiled its new Gmail service. Using AJAX, a web page can act more like a standard GUI (Graphical User Interface) with quick fluid responsivity. Up until this point a webpage had to send data to a script running on a server and then refresh itself or load a new page to display the data returned by the script. With AJAX, the webpage still needs to send the data to an external script, but using JavaScript, the page can merely update sections of itself without reloading or navigating to a new page. The webpage uses XML to form the data to be sent to another page so that it is similar to a standard HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) request.
With Office 2007, Microsoft now uses XML in the creation of documents. Combined with XML and Zip compression, Microsoft has reduced the size of files created from Office by 75%. These XML files also allow developers access to information about Office documents so that they can use them in their programs and applications. Due to the standardization of this data, it is possible to create and edit Microsoft Office documents using other applications (Such as OpenOffice.org) much easier and with more reliability.
XML also powers a number of important web technologies. Most ecommerce sites utilize XML to transfer data from their site to credit card processing sites to charge their customers. Many websites contain widgets and modules provided by Google. A popular example is Google Analytics. The webpage where the widget is located communicates to the Google servers via XML to provide the widget with data to display.
To summarize, XML is about standardized communication. XML allows a developer to create their own standard for their own application so that other developers, or other applications made by the same developer, can communicate with it. XML has also allowed a new way of using webpages and the internet (commonly known as Web2.0).
We Hope that you guys learned something and of course that we answered Jess's question. Please submit more questions and we'll impart our IT knowledge upon you.
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