December 2007
Intermediate to advanced
608 pages
13h 22m
English
The key point of XML is to provide an extensible markup language. An incredibly short pop-history lesson: HTML was derived from the Structured Query Markup Language (SQML). HTML has many wonderful attributes (pardon), but if you want to add a new element to HTML, you have two choices: apply to the W3C and wait awhile, or strike out on your own and be "nonstandard."
There was a strong need for the ability for two organizations to get together and specify tags that they could use for data exchange. Hey! Presto! XML was born as a more general-purpose markup language that allows users to define their own tags. This last point is the critical distinction of XML.
Read now
Unlock full access