XML Unleashed

Introduction

In an interview in February 1996, Bill Gates said that "HTML is our data type." Although this statement was made an eternity ago in Web-years, it says a lot about the relevance of XML, a technology that gives structure to the messy HTML world we have collectively created. You see, computers are for storing and manipulating data, and ultimately the Web is about sharing that data. However, in our excitement over being able to share information with each other so quickly and efficiently, we neglected to think things through. When you get right down to it, Bill Gates was wrong: HTML is a really bad data type. Fortunately, a few years ago some folks realized this and began working on a solution. If Bill Gates could turn back time, he would ...