Originally posted by griffinn
If you can write this, you know XML. (I guess this is why zootm said everybody knows XML.) But is it useful? Hell no.
it's useful as a data representation
language. a unified format which can be easily adapted to store many types of data eases the writing of parses and increases portability of formats. it may seem to lack in efficiency, but that's becoming more and more of a moot point, considering the power of computers and the types of data that XML is suitable for the storage of.
a lot of people spot that XML looks like HTML, and assume that XML is designed for writing webpages - this is not so. XML coupled with XSL or CSS could provide a way of showing data in a webpage-style way, but it's not really a hugely useful one (in my opinion), especially with SQL being widespread. that's not to say it has no place in the future, you just have to remember that XML is designed for representing the content on webpages, not the design of them. HTML is trying
to make this separation a bit more these days, but it's never gonna be exactly the same.