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I need help understanding XML.
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:11 am
by Wolf_22
I have had no experience with XML and since I plan on working with an application that uses it, I need to start learning it. With that being said, I was hoping that someone around here could tell me why it's used so much. Since I'm usually doing what I refer to as "design stuff", I rarely get my chances to develop. To me, XML falls under development but I fear that I may be incorrect in thinking like that because I'm staring at a Flash application right now that uses XML.
So what's up with XML? Why is it used so much and what does it offer that's so appealing to people who make websites?
Any information to help me in this would be appreciated.

Re: I need help understanding XML.
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:26 am
by Inkyskin
The reason I like it is because it's so simple to read, and its a pretty uniform standard, so you usually know exactly what format information is going to be presented in.
Re: I need help understanding XML.
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:38 am
by Wolf_22
But what's it for? I read something on Wikipedia about how it's used for making other markup languages, but in all honesty, I have no idea why this would even be needed. I've also been told that it's a sort of online database (in a matter of speaking). Why would you need it to be that, too?
I know how this may make me appear on here, but I've decided to start reading my "XML for Dummies" book. HA. It's no help so far... I just don't get it!

Re: I need help understanding XML.
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 8:47 am
by Inkyskin
think of it as a universal communication language - allows different programming languages to exchange data in a uniform manner. A sort of inbetween tool.
So my PHP application could output some XML for example, which could then be easily read by someones ASP.NET application. (Most modern languages have some built in method of reading XML)
Re: I need help understanding XML.
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:06 am
by jayshields
It's also used for building other technologies. Like XHTML, SOAP, RDF, OWL, XSLT, RSS, etc, etc, etc.
Re: I need help understanding XML.
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:39 am
by JAB Creations
XML is awesome because it has very few constraints; it's simple. RSS (Really Simply Syndication) and XHTML are subsets of XML, that is to say they are standards themselves that depend on XML as a parent language. This would not be possible if XML had a lot of constraints. That being said there apparently are XML validators out there that will tell you if your XML code is valid or not. Good luck!

Re: I need help understanding XML.
Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:06 pm
by Wolf_22
That clears it up a lot. Thanks guys.