Hi Bob,

You should read a little more about XML and its related technologies. Don't think on XML just as another markup language but as a new enabling technology. You can handle data coming from various platforms (mainframes, windows, unix), enforce it to respond to a custom format (schemas), transform it (with XSL/ XSLT) and even search or perform querying over XML documents (XPointer, XPath). As Evan said it also acts as the basis for a lot of new enabling technologies as WML, SOAP and BizTalk.

Jimi, to learn about XML from the ground up visit http://www.w3schools.com
I think every serious programmer should learn about it but much better understand it.


>Is marking up text and data really programming? Or is it just a frustrating way to do document creation?
>
>>>I think people make to much out of XML. It is what it is. Basically a file format for data. Yes, it is nice that it is somewhat self documenting. But, it's just a fancy text file.
>>
>>A very extensible, cross platform data format yes.
>>
>>>One of my biggest pet peeves is when you read in a Mag or Article about someone programming in XML. XML is not a language or IDE or compiler, you can't program in it!
>>
>>Sure you can. WML (WAP's markup language), XHTML, XSL and many or ways to program user interfaces and use 100% XML.