- Why XML?
- Where Do I Use XML?
- HTML Form Data to XML Conversion
- Conclusion
Where Do I Use XML ?
The relevance of using XML applies to both the front-end and back-end systems. Most of the organizations today have a large number of Web-based applications deployed on their intranets and extranets. The Web-based HTML forms write the data to some sort of database management system or the file system. Based on the technologies used, the Web server passes the form data posted by the browser to a program or script that takes the name value pairs in the http request; parses them; andfollowing some application logicdoes inserts, updates, or deletes in the database. One may want to find a way that these Web-based forms can be configured to easily generate XML data. We may use the DOM API, which is available both as a COM object or Java API to construct these documents.
Most of the databases today have some level of XML support. For a list of such resources, please refer to the list compiled by Ron Bourret at http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/XMLDatabaseProds.htm. The databases typically have an XML parser and an XSL processor that can be used to generate and transform the XML documents from the queries.