W10 XML (Critical Description)

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. XML languages or 'dialects' may be designed by anyone and may be processed by conforming software. XML is also designed to be reasonably human-legible, and to this end, terseness was not considered essential in its structure. XML is a simplified subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly systems connected via the Internet[1]. Formally defined markup tag and syntax language sets are based on XML (such as RSS, MathML, GraphML, XHTML, Scalable Vector Graphics, MusicXML and thousands of other examples) allow diverse software to reliably understand information formatted and passed in these languages within a given type (e.g. for music notation.) [better attribution for the following is needed] XML has been consistent with the general evolution of micro-computers within basic camps (by O.S. or processor type for example) that enables specialization of repetitive tasks. In XML's case, the task is to create a skeletal construct for exchanging complete, often complex, types of data reliably. Accomplishing the task in a formal collective fashion lowers costs and increases functionality and reliability for individual developers and the end user. XML is an open, meaning fee-free standard, with an engineering-savvy governing board and standards adoption process, like many recent digital systems initiatives including USB, flash memory formats, and digital television.
Advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages:
1.It is a simultaneously human and machine-readable format;
2.It supports Unicode, allowing almost any information in any written human language to be communicated;
3.It can represent the most general computer science data structures: records, lists and trees;
4.Its self-documenting format describes structure and field names as well as specific values;
5.The strict syntax and parsing requirements make the necessary parsing algorithms extremely simple, efficient, and consistent.
6.XML is heavily used as a format for document storage and processing, both online and offline,
7.Its logically-verifiable format is based on international standards;
The hierarchical structure is suitable for most (but not all) types of documents;
8.It manifests as plain text files, which are less restrictive than other proprietary document formats;
9.It is platform-independent, thus relatively immune to changes in technology;
10.Its predecessor, SGML, has been in use since 1986, so there is extensive experience and software available.
Disadvantages:
1.XML syntax is redundant or too large relative to binary representations of similar data.
2.The redundancy may affect application efficiency through higher storage, transmission and processing costs.
3.XML syntax is too verbose relative to other alternative 'text-based' data transmission formats.
4.No intrinsic data type support, XML provides no specific notion of "integer", "string", "boolean", "date", and so on.
5.The hierarchical model for representation is limited in comparison to the relational model or an object oriented graph.
6Expressing overlapping (non-hierarchical) node relationships requires extra effort.

Some words on What is the XML DOM?
1.The XML DOM is the Document Object Model for XML
2.The XML DOM is platform- and language-independent
3.The XML DOM defines a standard set of objects for XML
4.The XML DOM defines a standard way to access XML documents
5.The XML DOM defines a standard way to manipulate XML documents
6.The XML DOM is a W3C standard
The DOM views XML documents as a tree-structure. All elements; their containing text and their attributes, can be accessed through the DOM tree. Their contents can be modified or deleted, and new elements can be created. The elements, their text, and their attributes are all known as nodes.
We can learn XML Dom in W3C tutorial
XML 2.0 features is very a very good artical to refer XML's future development.