Applied XML Programming for Microsoft® .NET

Conclusion

XML data is a key element for any modern distributed and tiered system. But XML data alone is not really usable, and even when it is usable, it turns out to be not very profitable, because XML is a metalanguage that needs further instantiation and specialization.

You can think of XML as an abstract class for data description languages. Like abstract classes, you can use XML as a reference but not to perform complex tasks. So XML does matter but only if you pair it with other related technologies. In Chapter 6, we analyzed XPath as the emerging language for performing queries. I can’t say whether XPath is the definitive query tool or just a temporary technology that will soon be replaced by something else—perhaps XQuery. XPath is ...