Back in session 3 we looked at HTML as a way of presenting our text and images on a web page using tags. XML - eXtensible Markup Language - uses tags too. However, XML is designed to allow people to harness the power of the web to manage and interrogate data in efficient but sophisticated ways.
XML is a tool that enables people to create languages to manage and transport their data. For me, although XML has strict rules governing the syntax and grammar of the languages that are created, it can still help me, in my role as a corporate information manager, to manage the vast amounts of corporate information that my colleagues need to carry out their jobs more effectively.
One such example relates to the mountain of Health & Safety information my company is legally obliged to keep. I could use an XML language to order a library of documentation we now have, according to:
- what the document is (ie title and abstract of content)
- whether it is a policy, a process or a form
- which corporate entities it applies to (main company, joint ventures etc)
- who is ultimately responsible for it - our chief executive, our health and safety director or our business unit heads
- when it was last updated
<!ELEMENT HSlibrary (HS-doc)*>
<!ELEMENT HS-doc (doctitle, doctype, applicableto, approvedby, lastupdated, link, abstract)*>
<!ELEMENT doctitle (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT link (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT lastupdated (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT abstract (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST HS-doc doctype (Policy|Process|Form) #REQUIRED>
<!ATTLIST HS-doc applicableto (all_Mouchel|Liverpool2020|EnterpriseMouchel|Impact_Partnership) #REQUIRED>
<!ATTLIST HS-doc approvedby (Mouchel_CEO|HS_Director|BU_Head) #REQUIRED>
Fig 4. Health and Safety library DTD
By writing it in XML, we could publish it on our corporate intranet, but also exchange it with joint venture companies who may need to combine it with other information and publish it on their intranets.
Word count, excluding figures and captions: 278 words.
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