XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand. XML is great for information exchange, and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.

Example

Look at this simple XML document defining a FAQ:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE question-list SYSTEM "faq.dtd">
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xml" href="faq.xsl"?>

<FAQ-LIST>
   <QUESTION>
        <QUERY>Question goes here</QUERY>
        <RESPONSE>Answer goes here.</RESPONSE>
   </QUESTION>
   <QUESTION>
        <QUERY>Another question goes here.</QUERY>
        <RESPONSE>The answer goes here.</RESPONSE>
    </QUESTION>
 </FAQ-LIST>

Oracle and XML

The Oracle database (as well as most Oracle products) has XML support built-in. For example:

• XMLDB - standard option that ships with the Oracle Database (from 9.2.0). Previously called Project XDB
• XML-SQL Utility (XSU) - programatic interfaces (packages) for PL/SQL and Java
• XML Developer's kits (XDK) for Java, C, C++ and PL/SQL. See demo programs in the $ORACLE_HOME/xdk/ directory
• XSQL Servlet - processing SQL queries and generating an XML result set
• DBMS_XMLGEN - PL/SQL package to format data as XML documents

Also see

• XML/RSS Newsfeeds available on this site
• DTD and XML Schema
• XSL

External links

• The XML FAQ
• XMLhack - Developer news from the XML Community
• Oracle's XML Technology Center
• O'Reilly's XML.com

Glossary of Terms
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