What's So Great About XML?

XML is popular for many reasons, and I'll examine some of them here as part of our overview of where XML is today. My own personal favorite is that XML allows easy data handling and exchange.

Easy Data Exchange

I've been involved with computing for a long time, and one of the things I've watched with misgiving is the growth of proprietary data formats. In earlier days, programs could exchange data easily because data was stored as text. Today, however, you need conversion programs or modules to let applications transfer data between themselves. In fact, proprietary data formats have become so complex that frequently one version of a complex application can't even read data from an earlier version of the same application. ...

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