8.7. Communicating with XML

Applications currently communicate via the Internet in several ways, most of which you already know. TCP/IP and UDP/IP are used, but are only low-level transport protocols. Communication between systems is difficult because systems store data in memory using different methods. For example, Intel has a different order of data in memory (Little Endian) than PowerPCs (Big Endian). Another major point was that people just wanted a solid cross-platform technology communication system. One solution is RPC (Remote Procedure Calls), but it's not easy to use, and it's implemented differently by Windows than by most UNIX platforms. XML is often the best solution. XML was developed to “promote” interoperability between systems. ...

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