I was surfing the blog space this morning and a headline caught my eye, “XML turns X; film at XI.” After a good laugh, I learned that time passes all too quickly in the world of code, and something that is used almost as an afterthought is already ten years old. If you do not know, XML is a simple, open, and flexible format used to exchange a wide variety of data on and off the Web.
To mark the ten-year anniversary of the publication of its Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation, the World Wide Web Consortium plans throughout 2008 to recognize and thank the dedicated communities and individuals responsible for XML for their contributions. (Photo: J. Anderson)
To mark the ten-year anniversary of the publication of its Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation, the World Wide Web Consortium plans throughout 2008 to recognize and thank the dedicated communities and individuals responsible for XML for their contributions. Included among those recognized will be people who have participated in W3C's XML groups and mailing lists, the SGML community, and xml-dev — through a variety of activities and events.
XML is an interoperable standard that supports internationalization, extensibility, composition, and persistence. XML is supported by a crafty toolkit of related standards, including XSLT (for transforming XML content), XQuery (for querying XML databases), Document Object Model (for access in a programming environment), XML Schema, and XML Signature and Encryption. XML interoperability has made it a natural choice for defining both document formats (such as SVG or VoiceXML) and services (both SOAP-based and HTTP-based).
"There is essentially no computer in the world, desk-top, hand-held, or back-room, that doesn't process XML sometimes," said Tim Bray of Sun Microsystems. "This is a good thing, because it shows that information can be packaged and transmitted and used in a way that's independent of the kinds of computer and software that are involved. XML won't be the last neutral information-wrapping system; but as the first, it's done very well."
Lots of you reading this are not what would be considered a coder. That is perfectly okay with XML, it loves you anyway, and with a little effort you can use it almost straight off. Odds are you used XML today and did not even know it. “When you fill your auto tank with gas, XML often flows from pump to station. When you configure your digital camera, on some models you do so via XML-based graphical controls. When you plug it into a computer, the camera and the operating system communicate with each other in XML. When you download digital music, the software you use to organize it is likely to store information about songs as XML,” reads the well-worded press release from the W3C.
"The tenth anniversary of XML is a good time to reflect on the reasons for its creation," said Jon Bosak, the Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer who organized and led the W3C Working Group that produced the XML 1.0 Recommendation. "XML and its associated standards have conferred so many technical benefits over the years that it's easy to lose track of the forces that motivated the industry to base future web development on a profile of an International Standard, SGML (ISO 8879:1986).”
“Underlying all the technical work was a struggle between users and vendors over the ownership of data. Sun Microsystems sponsored the effort to make XML the standard for web data because we knew that the alternative was a closed, non-interoperable format. Today we celebrate the success of open standards in preserving web data from vendor lock-in. The struggle is far from over, but I'm proud that Sun was able to foster a development that can someday make vendor-independent data a reality," adds Bosak.
Joining the W3C, all of us at The Herald want to thank those in the XML Working Group too. Without them, we would not have the CMS we do that runs this site. “W3C would like to extend congratulations to the participants of the XML Working Group that created the standard: Jon Bosak, Paula Angerstein, Tim Bray (co-Editor), James Clark, Dan Connolly, Steve DeRose, Dave Hollander, Eliot Kimber, Tom Magliery, Eve Maler, Murray Maloney, Makoto Murata, Joel Nava, Conleth O'Connell, Jean Paoli (co-Editor), Peter Sharpe, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen (co-Editor), and John Tigue.”
View blog reactions
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)
Advertising
There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first to comment! (no registration required)