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Client-side processing and manipulation of dataBog'liq Ceponkus, Hoodbhoy - Applied XML - Toolkit for ProgrammersClient-side processing and manipulation of data.
XML documents do not inherently
contain user interface information in them and are structured such that the raw data
contained in them can be easily parsed and edited using standards-based parsers at the
client’s side. The Document Object Model (DOM) provides a ubiquitous way for
manipulating data using scripting or high-level programming languages, such as C++ or
Java. Thus, clients can perform processing of XML data at their side completely
independent of the server, which means users can now perform calculations, graphical
interpretation of data, statistical processing, or virtually any other manipulation of the XML
data at their end.
This means that clients have many extra degrees of freedom and power that enable
them to take advantage of their own hardware instead of depending on the server to
do the processing for them. That’s good if you want to be able to realize some tangible
benefits of having a spruced-up top-of-the-line PC while browsing the Web (normally,
you’re limited to the speed of the Web servers since they do all the processing for
you).
Generate several views of your data.
As we mentioned in
Chapter 1
, XML is more a
blueprint of data than a picture of it (as HTML is). As with any blueprint, you can do a lot
of things with it, and the ability to generate different views (graphical, tabular, 3-D,
multiple layout) is thus inherent.
Better search results.
We touched upon this in
Chapter 1
. If data providers employ a
flexible and descriptive markup scheme in their documents using XML, then search
engines are able to perform more accurate searches that allow you to find what you want
with an accuracy that is unprecedented today. So when your clients search your Web site
for an article on how to tackle a specific problem, they aren’t simply fed back a list of
pages with matching keywords (which is pretty darn annoying if you’re looking for
information in a hurry). Instead, they get a list of documents that contains documents that
are specifically
about
the subject they’ve asked for (for example, all documents
about
Operations Research as opposed to all documents that
contain
the words
Operations
or
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