What is XML??

[confused]

I read soemwhere that XML is a Markup Language true to it's name but then
in another book i read that it is not a Markup language and it has the ML
at the end as it is derived from SGML, also XML complements HTML in one book
but another book totally denies that. What am I to understand from this???

[LASS]

For a quick (20 minute) intro to XML, Check out this Tutorial. I found it
helped sort out the basics:

W3 XML School
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp

There's a 20 question quiz at the end that helps check for understanding.

- Lori

[Raj Das]

The XML acronym by itself won't get you very far. XML defines a set of technologies
and standards (W3C) for describing objects. The object could be a piece of
data or something more complex like a graphic (SVG, not the absence of the
ML). The useful unit of data is an XML document. Basically, everything is
an XML document, whether its a stylesheet/transform (XSL/XSLT) or actual
data (a person record expressed as XML). Typically, we reserve the term XML
document for actual data and stylesheets or transform are used for XSL/XSLT.
Some "spin-offs" have gotten their own acronyms (XSL, XLINK, XPATH, DIDL,
etc.), but at the core they are XML.

Basically, all of this was derived from SGML. It wouldn't be inaccurate to
say that XML is a subset of SGML. Why use a subset? SGML is just to big and
complicated to be useful everyday.

Also check out, http://www.xml.com/pub/a/98/10/guide0.html for a much more
complete description.


Raj

"confused " <anandee@metacrawler.com> wrote:
>
>I read soemwhere that XML is a Markup Language true to it's name but then
>in another book i read that it is not a Markup language and it has the ML
>at the end as it is derived from SGML, also XML complements HTML in one
book
>but another book totally denies that. What am I to understand from this???
>