Forum Moderators: phranque
Lately I've been on a tear learning all I can about XML and the technologies which it has given birth. Technologies like XML-RPC, XFML, SOAP, ebXML, and RDF/RSS all have their appeal. I'm still sorting out what's what and the advantages of each. In some cases - like XFML - the technology seems to be so new that there simply isn't much documentation. At least none which distills the concept down into a neat little package that I can hand to someone else. So, I'm sifting through the white papers, specs, articles, and a host of other resources that are taxing my little brain - as if it weren't filled already!
The reason I'm after this information is because of a project that I'm putting together that I feel would benefit very well from XML based technologies - if I could only figure out which ones to use and how to implement them. In fact, the first question to be answered is "how do I approach this?"
I can see very clearly how XML would be used to define my data but then structure of the definitions becomes important because this data is distributed and needs to be shared among many web servers. Which leads me to XML DTDs or using an XML Schema or using XFML. So, very quickly, I find myself in a quagmire of needing to make decisions on a rather large defining structure before I can actually begin work but lacking the experience and insight to make that decision.
This is sort of my long-winded way of getting to my question. My assumption is that there may be others on this Board in a similar position as I. You have a loose idea of what XML is and what it's good for but knowing that's just the tip of the iceberg. What I'd like to know is if you'd like to share information about XML? I'd be happy to post what I learn/information I find/what I have doubts about as I go but there's no sense in posting if no one has any interest.
The reason I ask is I've posted a few questions regarding XML and no one seemed to have an answer. So maybe there's simply not enough interest in XML yet. Either way, it would be good to see who's using/playing with/learning XML and it's relatives.
Any takers?
In my experience I have found schemas to work the best for what I do. You may want to use DTDs. I can visualize schemas better, being a designer, than DTDs. Also when I started using XML DTDs were on their way out yada yada yada.
XML really isn't for the vanilla website. It is more for application use. I think as more sites become dynamic and start sharing information like RSS we will see XML come alive.
XML really isn't for the vanilla website.
I almost agree with you. XML-RPC or SOAP would be useful to allow access to remote databases and the use of RDF/RSS would be handy as well. In both cases they'd need to work with some XML code though they may not actually produce any XML documents of their own.
