Week 9 Readings- XML

1) Introduction to XML

2) A Survey of XML Standards

3) Extending Your Markup: an XML Tutorial

4) W3Schools XML Schema Tutorial

To be honest, I was somewhat confused about what exactly XML is and what it's used for even after reading all of the articles and tutorials. From what I understood, XML is somewhat similar to HTML except that you can use it for anything, as opposed to just using it for documents. Or, it's an easier way to describe hierarchical data, and in a form that is machine/human readable. I got very confused by all the acronyms the articles threw out- what I got of DTD is that it's an important element of XML because it tells you what format to expect and it can validate that it's in the proper form. SGML, I did not understand exactly what it was except that it was a precursor to XML and HTMl, etc. I thought all the articles and tutorials were thorough, but I don't feel like I had enough background knowledge to fully understand them. Maybe I'm wrong, but I felt like XML is supposed to be simple but seems to often be misused (as the articles kept stressing the differences between XML and "PROPER" XML), possibly because it is so strict. I'm looking forward to next week's lecture to learn more about what XML is and how it can be used.