Role of XML in Web Based Evolving Distributed Technologies

Role of XML in Web Based Evolving Distributed Technologies

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is widely used for secure way of data sharing. If we talk about distributed technologies so web is all about sharing and once data is available on Internet so other websites either can scrap that data or can read it at least.

e.g If a newspaper website needs to be updated regarding news stories so that website will contact AP news for instance or any other Press API. If we take an example of yahoo news so we can have better idea that how is it getting latest updates in every moment. In fact no data base queries are putting load on server, its a simple way to store XML and ready XML according the pages, categories and parameters passed to that URL.

XML is in use especially for RSS which keeps the visitors updated that whenever a particular section on their favorite website will be updated so they will get that chunk at their place either in any RSS reader or any browser. Then that user either will visit that website or read details of that chunk immediately according to his interests.

When we talk about distributed technologies so server to server communication jumps in mind. Although SOAP services are there but still XML has its own importance.

Web based distributed technologies are simple to understand when we take it from client/server perspective. If talk about any famous payment gateway like paypal, beanstream or hsbc. So these are finally connected with a server on back end which validates the credentials provided in form of credit card number, expiry date and then query to the relevant merchant’s bank. Now it does not seems practical if everyone can query to bank server and server will always available to respond those queries. So practically this web based distributed service is being possible and implemented through a common format e.g. XML. A server will either periodically update a certain directory with XML file of a relevant category or will respond in XML format. Then that intermediary server will respond to the client node. Same like that, if we talk about client so server will expect a request in XML format or any prescribed format to communicate with.

Another example news API which is widely being used along with its meta data that which news has which photo image, and which photo image has what title and description? That news has reported at what time and which reporter has reported it. XML also provides meta data about a certain request. But finally it is a convenient language because it based on human understandable markup tags. An easy to understand request format will be written and provided for clients and the client nodes will do appropriate request to the server to get respective response from server. That’s why XML is easy to understand and fulfill the need of distributed technologies on world wide web.