The Impact of XML on Databases and Data Sharing
Len Seligman · 2000
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is receiving much attention as a likely successor to HTML for expressing much of the Web's content. In addition, XML can benefit databases and data sharing by providing a common format in which to express data structure and content. But like many new technologies, XML has raised unrealistic expectations. We give a brief overview of XML and offer opinions to help separate the benefits from the hype. In some areas, XML promises to provide significant and revolutionary improvements, such as by increasing the availability of database outputs across diverse types of systems, and by extending data management to include semi-structured data. This paper will first describe the limitations of current Web technologies for data sharing, and how XML addresses them. Next, it assesses the impact of XML on data management for both well structured and more loosely structured data. The longest section outlines the challenges of data interoperability and then descri...