Familiar with websites? If you are, you must have heard of HTML and XML. Both are used to design and develop webpages which, when integrated together make a website. HTML is the abbreviation for Hyper Text Markup Language while XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. Although they might appear similar (since both are markup languages) or XML might appear as a replacement for the age-old HTML, there are stark differences.
First of all, XML is used to store and transfer data while HTML is used to display data. So, XML is more interested in what data is and HTML is more concerned with what data looks like. Unlike HTML tags, XML tags are not predefined. The tags need to be designed by the developer. This allows the developer to create his own tags which is impossible in HTML. This makes XML completely self-descriptive. All of these make XML so popular among website developers.
Besides the above reasons, there are many other factors which make XML so popular. Firstly, XML offers a lot of functionality which come for a pretty reasonable cost. So, companies just need to invest a negligible amount from their vast treasury for the language and, since XML is flexible enough to allow developers to introduce their own tags and escape-sequences, it increases the scope of its use, thus making up for its cost. Secondly, as XML is used by a major section of the developers, it becomes popular as people always want to go for stuff that is used by all. For examples, sporting brands like Nike and Adidas are used by majority of athletes. So, when an every-day man requires to buy sporting goods, he simply will opt for either of the two as the brands are already so popular. Simply put, XML is so popular because it’s popular.
Another reason for XML to be so popular is its simplicity. Although XML might be dear in processing power or network bandwidth, it’s a lot cheaper, simpler and easier to use and implement as compared to other more efficient approaches like ASN.1. The ASN.1 compilers cost in six-figure sums whereas the XML parsers come for free. Given the fact that XML syntax is human-readable but ASN.1 isn’t, it makes debugging incorrect messages in XML a lot easier than in ASN.1. In fact, a standard webpage could take weeks to debug if created in ASN.1.
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