Everyone, This topic has been discussed quite extensively for several years now. There's lots of literature to refer to. You might want to look at:
"XML, Java, and the future of the Web" (Mar 1997) -- http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/sun-info/standards/xml/why/xmlapps.html "XML: The Future Of The Web" (1999) -- http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds6-2/future.html "XML and Java: The Perfect Pair" (Nov 1998) -- http://wdvl.com/Authoring/Languages/XML/Java/ "Why XML Is Going to Change The Way You Develop and Integrate Your Databases" -- http://www.filemaker.dk/nyheder/04.pdf (see the XML Advantages section near the end) If all one app is doing is sending data to another app, that's not very hard and XML may not be necessary. Especially if both apps are Java, or if a Java app wants to save data in a file, it's silly to convert Java objects to XML, transmit or save the XML, then convert the XML back to Java objects again. It's much easier to serialize the Java objects. But what if your Java class files change? (That wrecks de-serialization.) What if the other app is not Java? What if the other app has it's own internal data representation? This is what leads you toward an independent data representation, such as XML. The three main advantages of XML are that it's self-describing, extensible, and supports validation. Self-describing means that the element type (such as <title> or <author>) explains what the data means. Extensible means that a well-formed XML document can have unlimited depth (nesting of elements), and new elements and sub-elements can be added to an existing document format and can easily be ignored by older applications that are not expecting the new extensions. Validation means that you can describe what format the data should have and test a document against that format to confirm that it complies. All of this is very important when app designed independently have to be able to understand each other's data, formats need to be able to change over time, and an app needs to be sure that data from who knows where meets the app's requirements. XML is far more capable than most other data formats. You need to learn what those capabilities are and when to use them. Bobby _______________________________________________ Juglist mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org
