How XML Can Benefit Your Web Development

May.15, 2010 in Computers

If you’ve found yourself yearning for a document format that makes it easy and flexible to exchange data across the Web, then you should learn about XML, or Extensible Markup Language. . Software of many varieties are already using XML to optimize data organization and presentation.

It’s easy to determine that it is the flexibility of XML that explains its great appeal to web developers. Due the structure of the markup language, data exchange is possible in many different forms. Data access within XML is easier, as well, than it is with it’s sister markup language, HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language. Consider this: XML programming can tailor the look of one web page for either a mobile phone or a classic computer browser. Developers then could make one page instead of two. XML’s efficiency is probably becoming more clear!

It isn’t necessary to have extensive prior experience with HTML in order to operate well using XML. The two do go hand-in-hand in many respects, since they are both descendents of SGML, another markup language. Markup languages’ purpose is organize, categorize, or otherwise label content, and the markup itself describes the organization in question. Another way of looking at it is that markup contains the content, which is what you are looking at when you see an XML page rendered.

The need for XML emerged when the limitations of HTML became clear. In HTML, users cannot add new markup elements. With a need for greater flexibility, XML evolved to meet the needs of document and data handling in a web environment.

This is just a short introduction for those who wonder just what the heck XML is. For those who wish to make the most of web development, it’s a great idea to put learning XML on your list of things to do.