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What is XML?
Since business partners used disparate system, separations of data
from process are needed to achieve a seamless integration of business
process between two partners. International standard committees were
formed to define the necessary standards to achieve this main objective.
The result is an extensions to the most accepted mark-up language
(HTML) used on the web - extensible mark-up language (XML). XML offers
the ability to separate the data from the processes that act on that
data. XML provides a syntax that allows you to define each information
object in an unambiguous way. By doing so, you can capture the information
as one object and the process it with many different applications
depending upon the requirement at the time.
For you to appreciate XML, you need to know more about how your web
browser and the web server work. What you view on your web browser
is the work of the program on your personal computer. The web server
sends a series of text string which is based on the HTML. Refer to
the figure 2, which shows the visual display that you see (left hand
side) and the set of text that the browser received from the web server
(right hand side).
Figure 2: Example of HTML
Without much hinting, a human can deduce that this web page is showing
the comparison between the quotations from two suppliers. The HTML
is a series of "<>" called tags which are notations
for the display attributes. Browsers make use of these tags to display
the information. For example the "<p>" and "</p>"
pair is a notation for paragraphs. The browser needs to display the
text between these tags on one line. "<b>" and "</b>"
indicates that the text must be displayed in bold. While "<i>"
and "</i>" pair tell the browser that the text is
in italics.
Consider the XML format (refer to figure 3). You will notice that
the tag names are changed to a more meaningful name which we called
elements. The software is able to parse through this string of text
to extract the data and store them in its database.
XML is a document syntax, which consist of a set of start and end
tags. The meaning of each element that forms the XML document need
to be further defined. You need to come up with a common vocabulary.
Who define this vocabulary? The easiest way is to get your trading
partners together to define the vocabulary. Your Industry associations
may have a set of standards that you can use.
In Singapore, the XML Working Group under the IT Standards Board (ITSC)
?[4] has initiated a XML industrial project ?[5] to define some of
the most commonly used business documents; for example Request for
quotation, Quotation, Purchase Order, Purchase Order Acknowledge,
Delivery Order, Invoice, Receipt of Delivery and Receipt of Payment.
Figure 3: Example of XML
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