
How XML Helps
As soon as there are two or more parties, they need to communicate.
Currently, two approaches are particularly popular for client/server applica-
tions:
• middleware such as CORBA (Common Object Request Broker
Architecture), DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model), or RPC
(Remote Procedure Call)
• exchange formats such as HTML or XML
Middleware
I won’t cover middleware in great detail (this is an XML book, not a middle-
ware book), but I want to provide you with enough information for a com-
parison.
The basic idea behind middleware is to reduce the effort required to write
distributed applications. Networks are not always safe, reliable, ...