Appendix b the xml technologies family, Xml benefits – Grass Valley iControl Services Gateway User Manual
Page 25
Page 25 of 26
Appendix B The XML Technologies Family
There is
the specification that defines what "tags" and "attributes" are, but around XML 1.0,
there is a growing set of optional modules that provide sets of tags & attributes, or guidelines for specific
tasks. There is, e.g
(still in development as of November 1999), which describes a standard way
to add hyperlinks to an XML file. XPointer & XFragments (also still being developed) are syntaxes for
pointing to parts of an XML document. (An XPointer is a bit like a URL, but instead of pointing to
documents on the Web, it points to pieces of data inside an XML fil
the style sheet language, is
applicable to XML as it is to HTML
(autumn 1999) is the
for expressing style
sheets. It is based on
a transformation language that is often useful outside XSL as well, for
rearranging, adding or deleting tags & attributes. The
is a standard set of function calls for
manipulating XML (and HTML) files from a programming language.
is a specification
that describes how you can associate a URL with every single tag and attribute in an XML document.
What that URL is used for is up to the application that reads the URL, though.
3C's standard for
metadata, uses it to link every piece of metadata to a file defining the type of that data.)
and
help developers to precisely define their own XML-based formats. There are several more
modules and tools available or under development. Keep an eye on
XML Benefits
By choosing XML as the basis for some project, you buy into a large and growing community of tools
(one of which may already do what you need!) and engineers experienced in the technology. Opting for
XML is a bit like choosing SQL for databases: you still have to build your own database and your own
programs/procedures that manipulate it, but there are many tools available and many people that can
help you. And since XML, as a W3C technology, is license-free, you can build your own software around
it without paying anybody anything. The large and growing support means that you are also not tied to a
single vendor. XML isn't always the best solution, but it is always worth considering.