XML Unleashed

Summary

Namespaces solve an important problem inherent in the very nature of XML, which is the clashing of names in custom vocabularies. Without namespaces, it would be impossible to guarantee uniqueness between the myriad XML vocabularies developed and employed across the Web. I might create a vocabulary with an element named productid that served as an identifier for a product I had for sale in a Web-based storefront application. If I decided to integrate another XML vocabulary into the application that also used an element named productid, the application would have no way of distinguishing between the two. Namespaces solve this problem by providing a mechanism for establishing uniqueness between elements and attributes in XMLvocabularies. ...