panik well, the main part is the fact that xml is becomming a standard for data interchange.
xml is a text-based meta-markup language used to describe and structure data. Because it is text based it is a platform independant. every platform and loads of programs can read xml files, because it is actually in a txt format and not some propriety format as for example an Excel sheet or a .doc file from word. just try opening a Excel file in another package as Excel.
This means that the same xml file can be read by for example: Flash, a JAVA application, a Visual Basic Desktop Application, a static site that will convert the xml to HTML (through XSLT). It can be used to show the data on a PC, a TV, a PDA, a watch, anything.
if you use the basic txt file to import data into flash (url-encoded like variable1=value1&variable2=value2) there are not that much programs, desktop applications or front-ends that understand this type of data.
that’s one.
second is that xml adds the ‘meta-language’ part. XML is not really a new language. It is used to define other languages. it describes the data. xml describes and structures the data it contains. if you’d take a huge xml file, and convert it to an url-encoded txt file, it would look horrible, no structure, no clear description.
look at the xml file and it looks clean, structured, even someone that never saw 1 line of code in his entire life could understand what it is talking about.
xml can do all these things. Plus, maybe the most important part, the data interchange. data in XML is more easily used. all back-end systems now offer the possiblity to give XML to flash and receive XML from flash. doing it the url-encoded way restricts yourself to one system that is almost only easilly readable by flash.
xml is just a simple and handy way to interchange data.
hope this helped.
v
