Introduction to XML
Extensible markup language or XML for short is used to store structured data or more in network exchanges or between two different systems. A very simple and small database in the scale of a text file that is easily defined and used.
You read in this article
- What is the XML language?
- Why XML?
- Advantages of XML
- Disadvantages of XML
- Conclusion
The data network has different rules and languages for transferring and storing data, one of these languages is XML, which we will talk about in this article and its advantages and disadvantages. Of course, this old and old language is almost retired, and data storage and transfer formats such as JSON have taken almost the entire volume of the similar market, but familiarity with it is not without pleasure.
What is the XML language?
Extensible Markup Language, or XML for short, is a markup language designed to store and transfer data. It is a flexible way to create information formats and share structured data electronically over the public Internet as well as across corporate networks.
XML data is self-descriptive and self-defined, meaning that the data structure is built into the data, so the data gets there and there is no need to build a previous structure to store the data. It is understood dynamically in XML. It is also not a replacement for HTML, as it is designed to describe itself, to transfer data rather than display it. XML is platform-independent and language-independent.
The XML format can be used by any individual or group of individuals or companies that want to share information in a consistent manner. XML is actually a simpler and easier subset of the General Markup Language standard, which is the standard for document structure creation.
An XML document is considered “well-formed” (that is, can be read and understood by an XML parser) if its format conforms to the XML specification, if it is correctly encoded, and if elements are nested correctly. XML also supports the ability to specify element attributes and describe element attributes in the start tag of an element.
XML was released in the late 1990s and was created to provide an easy way to store data. XML became a W3C Recommendation on February 10, 1998.
Why XML?
The main advantage of XML is that you can use it to take data from programs like Microsoft SQL, convert it to XML, and then share the XML with other programs and platforms. So generally you can communicate between both platforms.
The main thing that makes XML really powerful is its international acceptance. Many companies use XML interfaces for databases, programming, mobile and office applications, etc., and their software has an independent advantage.
Of course, as he said, there are much better alternatives for it, but this storage format is supported by some databases or software that can facilitate some very complex tasks easily by saving this format.
Advantages of XML
- XML is platform independent and programming language independent, so it can be used on any platform as technology changes.
- XML simplifies the exchange of data between different systems because of its independent nature, and XML data does not need to be changed when it is transferred between different systems.
- Support for Unicode – an international encoding standard – for use with different languages and scripts. Each letter, number, or symbol is assigned a unique numeric value that applies to different platforms and applications. This feature allows XML to transmit any information written in each. Human language
- Data stored and transmitted using XML can be modified at any time without affecting the display of the data. Where another markup language such as HTML is used to display data, HTML receives the data from XML and displays it in the GUI, and when the data in the XML is updated, it remains unchanged. In HTML they are reflected in HTML.
- XML provides syntax validation using DTD and Schema. This verifies that the XML document is free of any syntax errors.
Disadvantages of XML
- XML syntax is verbose and redundant compared to text-based data transfer formats such as JSON.
- Redundancy in XML increases storage and transmission costs when the volume of data is large.
- An XML document is less readable compared to other textual data transfer formats such as JSON.
- XML files are usually very large in size due to their verbose nature, this depends entirely on who is writing them.
- XML is not supported in Matrix format.
Conclusion
With all these explanations and definitions and glorifications and even without taking into account the mentioned disadvantages, a place in the future and even in the current situation on the web cannot be considered for this format, and due to its popularity and high volume of use. is still supported and used.
If you are a programmer, you must have dealt with this format, and if you are not familiar with it, you can easily see and understand a few different formats, but using it in traditional and old software may be useful and There are much more attractive formats and structures that have replaced XML and it is better not to use it seriously.
