Oracle8i Application Developer's Guide - XML Release 3 (8.1.7) Part Number A86030-01 |
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An XML Primer, 8 of 9

## Why Use XML?

XML, the internet standard for information exchange is useful for the following reasons:

- Solves Data Interchange Problems. It facilitates efficient data communication where the data:

  - Is in many different formats and platforms

  - It must be sent to different platforms

  - Must appear in different formats and presentations

  - Must appear on many different end devices

  In short, XML solves application data interchange problems. Businesses can now easily communicate with other businesses and workflow components using XML. See Chapters 2 through 20 for more information and examples of how XML solves data interchange problems.

  Web-based applications can be built using XML which helps the interoperation of web, database, networking, and middleware. XML provides a structured format for data transmission.

- Industry-Specific Data Objects are Being Designed Using XML. Organizations such as OAG and XML.org are using XML to standardize data objects on a per-industry basis. This will further facilitate business-to-business data interchange.

- Database-Resident Data is Easily Accessed, Converted, and Stored Using XML. Large amounts of business data resides in relational and object-relational tables as the database provides excellent data queriability, scalability and availability. This data can be converted from XML format and stored in object-relational and pure relational database structures or generated from them back to XML for further processing.

#### Other Advantages of Using XML

Other advantages of using XML include the following:

- You can make your own tags

- Many tools support XML

- XML is an Open standard

- XML parsers built according to the Open standard are interoperable parsers and avoid vendor lock-in. XML specifications are widely industry approved.

- In XML the presentation of data is separate from the data's structure and content. It is simple to customize the data's presentation. See "Presenting XML Using Stylesheets" and "Customizing Your Data Presentation".

- Universality -- XML enables the representation of data in a manner that can be self-describing and thus universally used

- Persistence -- Through the materialization of data as an XML document this data can persist while still allowing programmatic access and manipulation.

- Platform and application independence

- Scalability

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