Web Technologies in a Nutshell - XML
HTML is powerful but does not separate display and form (structure of document component as an object)
XML is a generalization of HTML which allows definition of arbitrary tags
e.g. <student name=“Jane Doe” class=“CPS616” grade=“…” >Working Hard</student> is more elegant way of capturing information in a reliable fashion than HTML
<h2>Students</h2> <ul><li>Jane Doe: Working Hard</li><ul> <li>Class: CPS616</li> <li>Grade: …</li> …. </ul> </ul> with a PERL program to extract data
XML allows powerful way of defining dynamic Ascii databases useful for “modest size data” such as people, document citations etc.
XML parsers map XML tags into HTML for display
XML can also be used to define extensions to HTML such as special tags for mathematics or chemistry or …..
XML defines syntax for “serializing” Web objects and transmitting between clients and servers