Why XML?

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 09:42:29 -0400 (EDT), Mike Taylor <lonewolf(at)one.net> asked:
>Since 1998, I've read countless articles explaining what XML is and
>I've seen a lot of snippets of custom-tagged code showing what it looks
>like, but because my job has never required it, I've never fully
>understood what exactly XML *does* for a company, especially in B2B
>applications. I've never seen any real-world examples that show how using
>it vs. something else vastly improves workflow. 
>
>To those of you using XML extensively in this context, can you share with
>us what you had been doing before and how/why moving to XML has radically
>changed things? 

Mostly, I don't do B2B.  However, I work with quite a few products that use XML, have been since, like 1998.  Usually, XML is used when data of indeterminate format is stored somewhere and needs to be displayed or used somewhere else.  Like, for example, the data is stored in some weirdo database and needs to be displayed on a browser page and then modified by the user and the modified data stored back.  Obviously, that kind of paradigm would work B2B or not.

I can't show you any of my clients' products, but I use XML to update the following page every month:
http://www.armadillosoft.com/cmc/readevents.php3

Before I implemented this in XML, every month I'd have to enter the data, which I got as ASCII, and format it onto an HTML page.  I'm actually a fast 
typist and very swift at HTML, but it was not an intellectually stimulating task.  

So, now, I enter the event information into a form, store it in a database, publish it as XML and use a php program I've written to format the event information and display this page.  

Why don't I just let the browser display the XML for me?  Well, I'd love to, but most browsers don't do XML and I didn't want to keep hand-entering the data until most of my users' browsers caught up.

For a little more information about how I implemented the XML, see:
http://armadillosoft.com/aboutTop.htm#xml

My plan, when my ship comes in, or, if someone comes forward to fund me, is to write a really good user-friendly XML pre-processing suite in C++.  Know anyone with $?  

--Emily

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~                            Emily Berk                                 ~
On the web at www.armadillosoft.com *** Armadillo Associates, Inc.      ~ 
~             Project management, developer relations and               ~
extremely-technical technical documentation that developers find useful.~
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