Pourquoi XML ?

XML is the eXtensible Markup Language. It has been firstly designed to improve the functionality of the Web by providing more flexible and adaptable information identification.

Development of XML started in 1996 and has been a W3C Recommendation since February 1998.

• A DTD specifies the structure of an XML file: it gives the names of the elements, attributes, and entities that can be used, and how they fit together.
• A XML Schema provides a means of specifying element content in terms of data types, so that document type designers can provide criteria for validating the content of elements as well as the markup itself. Schemas are written as XML files
• XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document.

XML allows the flexible development of user-defined document types. It is called eXtensible because it is not a fixed format like HTML (a single, predefined markup language). Instead, XML is actually a `metalanguage' -- a language for describing other languages --which lets you design your own customized markup languages for limitless different types of documents.

It provides a robust, non-proprietary, persistent, and verifiable file format for the storage and transmission of text and data both on and off the Web.

Text formats also allow developers to more easily debug applications. Like HTML, XML files are text files that people shouldn't have to read, but may when the need arises.

Less like HTML, the rules for XML files are strict. A forgotten tag, or an attribute without quotes makes an XML file unusable, while in HTML such practice is tolerated and is often explicitly allowed.

XSL is the advanced language for expressing style sheets. It is based on XSLT, a transformation language used for rearranging, adding and deleting tags and attributes.

XML is a public format: it is not a proprietary development of any company. XML is license-free, platform-independent and well-supported

Because XML lets you define your own markup language, you can make full use of the extended hypertext features of XML to store or link to metadata in any format.

You are therefore free to use any suitable method from simple attributes to the embedding of entire Dublin Core/Warwick Framework metadata records.

By choosing XML as the basis for a project, you gain access to a large and growing community of tools and engineers experienced in the technology.

Your XML data are human readable and more easly maintained. You will always be able to transform these XML data.

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