Entry

What can I use XML for?

Nov 21st, 2000 05:38
Michael Claßen,

XML has many applications, but most of them fall into one of the 
following categories:
- documents: Instead of using binary file formats, such as Microsoft
Office, documents are stored in XML and thereby more independent of
their creator application, and easier to process with other software.
- meta data: Resouces, whether in XML or not, whether on the Web or
not, need descriptions about themselves so that search engines and
directories can index and retrieve them more precisely. XML is a good
choice for expressing this data about data.
- data exchange: Today data exists in many different, incompatible 
formats. XML comes with many free data processing tools, and converting
data from and to XML is relatively straight-forward. With these
advantages XML aspires to become the universal data exhange format.
- application integration: A handful of different component models 
have emerged in the recent past, with their respective object
communication protocols. COM, CORBA IIOP, Java RMI and legacy protocols
can be easily bridged using XML-based methods such as XML-RPC and
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).