Chapter 20. Sharing Data with WDDX
Imagine for a moment if you will, that a technology exists that lets you easily share complex data between applications written in different languages and running on different platforms. Now imagine that the same technology uses an XML-compliant DTD to represent datatypes such as strings, arrays, structures, record sets, and binary data as plain ASCII text. Sound like vaporware? It isn’t. The technology exists, it is open and free, and it is called WDDX.
WDDX Basics
In 1998, Allaire created a new XML-based technology called the Web Distributed Data Exchange, or WDDX. WDDX is an open technology for exchanging both simple and complex datatypes using a language-independent representation of the data based on an XML 1.0-compliant DTD. It is designed to be used by any number of programming languages without regard to the platforms they are running on. A number of serialization/deserialization modules have been written for a variety of popular programming and scripting languages and are freely available. For the most up-to-date information on WDDX or to obtain the SDK, please visit http://www.openwddx.org.
What Can You Do with WDDX?
The first question you are probably asking is “what the heck can I do with WDDX?” Well, to put it simply, you can do a hell of a lot with it. Because WDDX allows you to represent data in a completely neutral and open format, WDDX is the perfect vehicle for sharing data between applications written in different languages. ...
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