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The ability to develop real Web applicationsBog'liq Ceponkus, Hoodbhoy - Applied XML - Toolkit for ProgrammersThe ability to develop real Web applications.
Today, very few real “Web applications”
exist. By that we mean full-blown, three-tier applications. It’s not as if people aren’t trying
or lack the skills to get around obstacles. The fact is that the set of building blocks
needed to create them was missing. With XML, the set of blocks is complete. XML
provides a universal data exchange format complete with a common object model for
interacting with it. Couple this with HTML for displaying information and scripting for
providing decision/business logic (both of which exist and are ubiquitous already), we’ve
now got the complete set of tools to go about creating full-blown Web applications.
The ability to collect and integrate data from multiple sources.
Today, collecting
information from disparate sources is very hard. Most places resort to rekeying data from
one system to another just to get around the limitations of current data structures.
Because XML is so flexible, richly structured data can be easily and faithfully
represented, exchanged, and interpreted across virtually all electronic data systems at
middle-tier servers from back-end servers and other applications or devices. The reverse
flow can also occur; that is, clients can disseminate information in XML that can then be
converted to the primary storage database after conversion through the middle tier.
Getting piecewise data updates.
Today, when you want to update the information in
your browser—for example, to look at new stock quotes or get a new article—you end up
getting the entire HTML page rebuilt from the server and completely redelivered to you.
This seems like a process that kills servers, and it does. With XML, you have the ability to
get
only
the
updated
information sent to you instead of the entire data set (for example,
the entire page with extra formatting information). Think of it as going grocery shopping:
Instead of having to buy everything all at once, you only buy the things you need and go
through the 10-items-or-less lane.
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