Consider the modern database: sleek, efficient, and able to retrieve records in the blink of an eye. Data representation, management, and storage have risen to heights we dared not dream of only 10 years ago. But ironically, despite these achievements, the hippest, most cutting-edge data management technology today is (drumroll, please ...) delimited text.

Text files have always been the surest and simplest way to represent data. With binary files -- the text file's evil opposite -- you have to worry about details such as byte order, precision, and sign bits. The 32-bit integer your computer stores will get cut in half by another system that believes integers are 16 bits long, and a program looking for a calendar date will be stymied by a packed integer such as 6212000. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Y2K developers who went combing through legacy data found innumerable horrors, all committed in the name of efficient data storage and transmission.

Thankfully, the emergence
of text files has changed
the way we manage and
exchange data.

Thankfully, the emergence of text files has changed the way we manage and exchange data. XML and its supporting technologies have been right at the vanguard of the revolution. With XML, you can structure complex data in a simple, elegant, and easily understandable way. XML is extensible, which means it can easily incorporate new features related to document formatting and automatic processing. Best of all, XML is freely available, which is part of the reason why few companies undertake information management projects without considering the role of XML.

Here to stay

We've seen lots of computing fads come and go, and each one's downfall has brought costly consequences. But XML is here for the long haul, partly because it's a proven, widely adopted technology and partly because its inherent flexibility has led to scores of new technologies and extensions that support and rely on parent XML.

But in many ways, these technology offshoots contribute to XML's biggest problem: complexity. There's at least one XML parser for every popular programming language and operating system. To ensure consistency and compliance with the XML specification, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) issues standards (or "recommendations") that govern the structure of XML files and the programming interfaces used to manipulate them. The W3C also evaluates proposed extensions to XML, ensuring that new methods of parsing XML data are consistent before they become standards.

But developers and vendors still have plenty of room to improvise, because the W3C -- best known for its standardization of HTML -- is rather liberal as standards bodies go. It does not enforce its standards, and there is no W3C-compatibility certification program. As a result, the W3C has created a cooperative community not unlike that of the Linux set: Some of the most crucial additions to the XML specification have resulted from a programmer's off-standard riffing.

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