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About XML

Posted by admin on 25 Sep 2008 at 07:35 PM
$5.00

Programming Languages / HTML and XHTML

Hi Kaustabh

My name is Anand Chiney. I want to know every thing about XML. Starting from the basics. Where it is implemented. Rather I have a guess about this but i m not confident. I have heard that it is replacing HTML but in what way. I know HTML and Had used it for Website development. The books that I bought for XML cant clear my idea about it. Such as DSO, DOM, XSL, XHTML, DTD etc etc. I m very confused. Please Tell me all these things.

Hope u will reply me soon.
Have a nice day

Anand Chiney

Accepted Answer:

Answer provided by admin on 25 Sep 2008 at 07:35 PM

Hi Anand,

Obviously there are lot of things to know about XML.

I will attempt to explain some basic questions such as what exactly is XML.

What is XML ?
In a simplest sense, XML is just another data format i.e it is a structured way of representing data. You must be familiar with file formats such as jpg or gif. These are also data formats but are specialized to represent specific kind of data ie image data.

As you might know , XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. Lets try to see what each of these words mean.

Language: In computer terminology, a Language is a string of symbols that are written according to predefined rules. For example , english grammar defines rules for arranging symbols ( a-z ) to form valid english sentences. Thus the XML specification defines set of rules which you need to follow in order to generate a valid XML string or document.

Markup Language: Languages such as HTML and XML etc are not programming languages. There are 3 basic characteristics of programming languages:
a. Provide facility to assign value to variables.
b. Provide facility for conditional execution ( if.. then ..else )
c. Provide facilty for repetitions ( for loops etc)
As you know , neither HTML nor XML provide any of the above facilities.
Instead, the markup languages provide special instructions called "tags" to identify various parts of your document . Example: In HTML , <head> tag represents the header section of your document.

Extensible Markup Language:
The reason XML is different and hence more powerful than HTML is because unlike HTML that defines fixed set of tags, XML allows you to define your own tags.
For example
<body>my name is <firstname>kaustubh</firstname>
is a valid XML string but not a valid HTML string.

Let me know if this helps.

You can write to me in case you have more questions.

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