XML (Extensible Markup Language)

HTML was created by a great guy, which I have a page solely dedicated to him. What's his name you ask, you know, Sir Timothy Berners Lee. Sir Tim creates HTML and everyone uses it, and the first type of web sites that are created in the early 90's are called Brochure Sites. Basically organizations that had a brochure would simply use the web and create a website of their existing brochure. But big companies saw the internet for what it could be, so these three companies known as Travelocity, Amazon and Ebay, are thinking "Things that make you go hmmmm" and saw the internet as a great way to become a business medium to much more than just what it was doing at the time. So along comes Charles Goldfarb and he comes up with a wonderful concept of being able to separate data from presentation. HTML is really all about presentation, but what if I can't understand the data or what if I want to apply some business logic to the exchange of data, can't do that with HTML. Back to Charles Goldfarb, so this genious has a concept of separating data from presentation, but not really sure what to call it, so his idea comes to the W3C and they create a working group and Charles Goldfarb's idea becomes the language for data exchange with systems that are disparate (very cool word for meaning things that are not the same) and the language is called XML, aka, eXtensible Markup Language.

Looking back at HTML, HTML's tags are defined and have specific meanings. So the rules for XML are fairly simple, let the author of the document create their own tags that hopefully have a significant meaning to the author or organization and just follow these simple rules for a well formed document.

1. One Root Element
2. Starting Tags have closing Tags
3. Tags are Case Sensitve
4. Attribute values must be enclosed in quotes (single or double)
5. Tags have to be properly nested

When creating an element, make sure the tag begins with a letter, you could use a underscore or a period to start your tag, but then you would be different and stick out, so start it with a letter and then put whatever you want in the tag, b but please for the love of development, make the tag meaninful.

XML is used everywhere for the exchange of information. You can even make XML happen out of a database. So much to understand and so little time to understand it. I will have more information when I have time here, but for now, if you need an XML tutorial, just check out this website link and it will help you out for now.

Remember Learning is Fun!

XML Tutorial