XML's Impact on Databases and Data Sharing

  • Authors:

  • Len Seligman;Arnon Rosenthal

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Computer
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

The Extensible Markup Language, HTML's likely successor for capturing Web content, has generated a lot of interest. Created by the World Wide Web Consortium to address HTML's limitations, XML resembles HTML's format but offers users a more extensible language. It lets information publishers invent their own tags for applications. Alternatively, they can work with organizations to define shared tag sets that promote interoperability and help separate content from presentation. While XML addresses content, Cascading Style Sheets, the Extensible Stylesheet Language, and Extensible HTML handle presentation separately. XML also supports data validation. XML's advantages over HTML include support for multiple views of the same content for different user groups and media; selective, field-sensitive queries over the Internet and intranets; a visible semantic structure for Web information; and a standard data and document interchange infrastructure. Using XML and related tools often eliminates problems associated with heterogeneous data structures. Like any new technology, XML has generated exaggerated claims. It does not come close to eliminating the need for database management systems or solving large organizations' data-sharing problems. Although XML hype has raised unrealistic expectations, the language does reduce the data-sharing obstacles among diverse applications and databases by providing a common format for expressing data structure and content.