In e-business, critical business units such as customers, employees, suppliers, and distributors stay connected via internet technology. Data capture, sharing and integration with critical business units are essential for any e-business to be successful. XML is widely used for such applications across the industry, as it is simple and platform independent. Many organizations are encouraging XML conversion of business documents, as it provides an open, cross-platform way to transact, manage, and share information.
Let us go through some of the applications of XML in e-business.
Applications of XML in e-business
Data Interchange: XML is one of the best data interchange formats that allow documents to be sent easily across the internet. The language is closely related to pre-existing standards such as Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and so can be easily managed. XML is recognized for its ability to allow different types of systems to talk to each other and is therefore highly effective during an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). It is greatly adopted for global trading, as the same is Unicode compliant.
Content Management: XML greatly focuses on the content and structure of data, rather than its presentation. It is possible to present XML documents in multiple displaying devices with an XSL or XML parser. Moreover, customized tags used in XML documents make document searches more meaningful.
Allows web and mobile computing even in a disconnected scenario: In a disconnected scenario XML documents can be delivered and cached at the client’s side, thereby facilitating web and mobile computing. Scalability of a distributed application can be enhanced by uploading locally stored XML files to the server and merging them with centralized managed data. XML has also been used to define many e-business standards like web services standards.
Organizations are greatly engaging XML conversion services, as the XML format is simple, easily exchangeable, and accessible to programmers. Moreover, the data sharing on XML platform is independent, which makes it an excellent mediator between applications.
