XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Why Use XML for Data?

Before XML, individual programmers had to invent a new data format every time they needed to save a file or send a message. In most cases, the data was never intended for use outside the original program, so programmers would store it in the most convenient format they could devise, which was often very tightly coupled to the program’s internal data structures. Indeed, the earliest versions of Microsoft Word wrote at least part of their files by dumping memory straight to disk, and then opened those files by reading the data back into memory. This made understanding the data format and loading it into any other program extremely difficult. A few de facto file formats evolved over the years (RTF, CSV, ASN.1, and the ubiquitous Windows .ini file format), but in too many cases, the data written by one program could usually be read only by that same program. In fact, it was often possible for only that specific version of the same program to read the data.

In recent years, however, XML has begun to solve this problem and make data a lot more portable. The rapid proliferation of free XML tools throughout the programming community has made XML the obvious choice when the time comes to select a data-storage or transmission format for their application. For all but the most trivial applications, the benefits of using XML to store and retrieve data far outweigh the additional overhead of including an XML parser in your application. The unique strengths of using XML as ...