Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy

Chapter 14. The role of XML

XML is fast becoming the new Internet standard for information exchange. For complex information reuse, XML is the technology of choice. In this chapter, we briefly describe XML and its origins and explain why XML is so valuable in a unified content strategy.

A brief history of XML

XML, eXtensible Markup Language, is advertised as many things, including the successor to HTML as the language of the Web. But unlike HTML, XML is not a specific markup language; it is a standard for defining your own markup language.

XML is not new; it is a recasting of an existing standard: Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). In its current iteration, the XML specification is at version 1.0. People sometimes interpret that to mean ...