XML Schema Complete Reference, The

1.1. Why XML?

For as long as there have been programming languages, programmers have been trying to simplify ways to transmit data from one section of code to another. The simplification comes mostly in the form of standards. Standardization has evolved from solely technical specifications to standards accepted by a large community. The latter often involves programmatic enforcement. Communicating between sections of code has evolved over the years. At a macroscopic level, the following progression roughly describes the evolution of software development:

1. Linear source code

2. Functions and subroutines

3. Object-oriented classes

4. Distributed processing

In recent years, software solutions have required distributed computing. From the end of the 1980s to ...