they are really only half of the application development equation. – The programs that are written using these languages must process data, and this data must be turned into information. – Information is the other half of the portability equation. Portable Data
XML provides standards to move data in a variety
of ways. – Often we can think of data as moving vertically and horizontally. • The term vertical means that data is meant to move through multiple industry groups. • Horizontal applications are specific to a particular industry, such as retail or transportation. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) The primary function of HTML is to present data in a browser. – XML, on the other hand, does concern itself with data verification issues. – XML is much more strict with its format than HTML and was designed to represent data. XML Versus HTML
HTML tags are all predefined. Tags such as
<HTML>, <HEAD>, <BODY>, and so on are all defined in the HTML specification. – You cannot add your own tags. • Because HTML is intended for formatting purposes, this is not a problem. – XML, however, is meant to define data. • To define data, you need to create your own tag names. XML and Object-Oriented Languages XML works hand-in-hand with object-oriented languages to provide what I have termed “portable information.” – Often, an application written in an object- oriented language is developed to interact with XML. – The goal is to share data in a pre- determined, portable manner. Parsers
A parser is an application that reads a document
and extracts specific information. – The parser reads each line of a program and uses specific grammar rules to determine how to produce code. – A parser would verify that a print statement was written with the appropriate syntax. Validating the Document (DTD)
To define data, you need to create your own tag
names. – This is where a document called the Document Type Definition (DTD) comes into play. The DTD is where you define the tags that describe your data. • You are not required to use a DTD. However, using a DTD provides a great benefit to validating XML documents. Integrating the DTD into the XML Document XML Validation
Many applications will validate XML code.
– The XML validator at the w3schools site is one that is easily accessible.
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_validator.asp Using Cascading Style Sheets
Although XML is not generally used for
presentation purposes, there are ways to format XML. – One of these is to use CSS. CSS are used heavily in the HTML world to format content. – To a certain degree, CSS can be used to format XML. JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Although XML is much more structured, especially when using a DTD, technologies such as the JavaScript Object Notation, or JSON, fall into the category of “more flexible.” – The w3schools site provides the following bullet item description of JSON as: 1. lightweight text-data interchange format 2. language independent 3. “self-describing” and easy to understand