XML Has Become the CGM of this Decade

Someone asked me yesterday, "Does XML have any effect on your daily (working) life at this time?"

My immediate answer was, "No."

After all the hyper over XML (the HTML-based eXtensible Markup Language), I wondered why it had no impact. I quickly realized that XML has become the CGM for this decade. It's there, it's useful to some, it's breaking up into vendor-specific dialects (recall WPG, WMF, EMF, ActiveCGM), and it's not at all earth-shattering.

(Indeed, Autodesk had added the import and export of DesignXML to AutoCAD 2002 -- hidden, albeit, in the Insert and WBlockcommands -- but pulled it out of AutoCAD 2004.)

It's just another file format.

Comments

[MS]

As Universal Syntax, I think XML's importance and influence goes way beyond CGM. More than a file format, you might think of it as a meta-file format - it facilitates the creation of new file formats. These days anyone who has some structured data to represent (for which there isn't already an accessible file format) in my opinion should have to present a good reason as to why they _aren't_ whipping up some XML tags to represent it. By using XML you've immediately made the data much more accessible to both machines and people.

[SRS]

Isn't it strange then that you put the RSS link to your blog in the last UpFront eZine? That was trite, but this isn't: XML was never a technology for users.

Before dismissing XML's impact, maybe you should ask software developers how much money and time it's saving. Or take a peek at how often it shows up on Freshmeat.

XML is making software better and cheaper. Comparing it to CGM is just silly.

ralphg replies: Dunno about freshmeat.

[MS]

Actually, although it looks like it, it isn't HTML, it is RSS 1.0 (Really Simple Syndication - a purpose built language for representing news stories for syndication) which is built out of RDF (Resource Description Framework - hence the .rdf extension - a general purpose knowledge representation language with AI roots) which is built out of XML (eXtensible Markup Language - universal syntax) which _looks_ a lot like HTML because they both are outgrowths of SGML (Standardized General Markup Language) which grew out of GML which was created at IBM as a flexible system for representing document content.

It isn't supposed to be looked at by a browser. It is meant to be accessed by a news aggregator. When you subscribe to a feed with a news aggregator, you give it that URL. It then checks the URL every hour (or whatever interval you specify) and presents the user with a display of all the feeds subscribed to, and it then keeps track of what's new and what you've read. It all makes sense once you try a news aggregator.

Looking like HTML, and having the same basic syntax (elements [or colloquially, tags] and attributes) is a big plus for XML. Millions of people have experience with HTML, and that experience and general comfort with the look of it transfers quickly to XML, with the added benefit that you can make up your own tags and attributes.

Once I tried a news aggregator (http://www.bloglines.com/ - a free, web-based one with some resulting benefits) six months ago I never looked back. It has changed the way I get news on the web.