IS Week 5

This week we worked on building XML files. XML is extensible markup language. XML is a tag based syntax, in a manner similar to HTML. However, there are some key differences between XML and HTML. HTML uses specific tags, whereas XML is extensible by nature, allowing you to make your own tags and in turn customize and expand your data structure. It is used in a variety of technologies, like RSS. However, it is also used to convert older data storage mediums to newer databases, thus allowing older information to be integrated seamlessly into a new system. The primary objective of XML is to structure and describe information. For instance, an XML structure could describe a nuclear family. The family could be the parent tag, while attributes might be mother, father, son, daughter, dog, and cat, as well as house. Dog and cat may be qualified as optional structures. XML has several advantages and disadvantages. Among its advantages is that it allows for data to be stored separate from its presentation. It also has an open format that allows for it to be read by a variety of applications, as well as increasingly output by prominent programs like Microsoft office. Its disadvantages include its lack of suitability to large datasets. This is as opposed to R, which is particularly attuned to such tasks. It also has difficulty representing images, as it is a text based storage system.

XML documents have a few key elements. First, they have the document declaration. It identifies the document as an XML file and also declares the standalone attributes. These are followed by the XML elements, AKA tags. These are the highest order elements of your file. They are defined with an opening angle bracket and closed with an angle bracket and slash. Within tags exist attributes, which are the fields which contain the data the tags have within them.

https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/xml/

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