What is XML?

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) allows you to store, exchange and display data or information in a structured and efficient way. In this respect it is no different from most existing data formats, except that XML provides a higher degree of standardisation and flexibility than many other proprietary technologies, opening up many new and exciting opportunities in business computing and information technology.

XML allows you to store structured documents or data as text and provides you with a way of manipulating, transforming, and presenting your data in many different formats. For example, information or data stored in an XML document can be displayed in a web browser using a Cascading Style Sheet. In addition, when XML documents are stored in a database they can be queried and retrieved much like any other data source.

Why XML?
The business benefits of using XML and XML-based systems are well documented in the IT media and on the internet itself. XML, or rather technologies that use XML as their basis, promise to provide the IT industry with greater standardisation, interoperability, efficiency, and present the potential for many new technologies.

• Platform Independent and Reusable: XML is machine and platform independent so it can be exchanged between one system or network and another. Plus, once information is in XML format it can be reused for many different purposes for digital and printed publication.
• Worldwide Standard: XML is a standard language defined and ratified by the W3C consortium so it is not controlled or owned by any one company. This ensures the future of XML as an open standard employed by the whole IT industry.
• Information exchange: Since XML is an agreed standard it affords a high degree of information exchange, in particular between networks, businesses and other interdependent organisations.
• New Business opportunities: The standardisation and flexibility of XML means that many existing business problems can be solved more efficiently, while many new business opportunities will arise and take advantage of XML.

oXML, the component
oXML is an external component that allows you to manipulate and create XML documents in Omnis Studio. XML is becoming the standard format for data storage and information exchange across the whole Business to Business landscape. XML has already revolutionised several business sectors, including content management, information publishing, and news syndication, and its adoption looks set to continue throughout all areas of business, academic, and scientific computing.

XML support is implemented in Omnis Studio as an external component that uses the standard Document Object Model (DOM) level 2 API. The Omnis XML component is named “oXML” and will be available for all Windows, Unix, and Mac OS platforms. The oXML component addresses the most basic XML requirement, namely the ability to parse and extract information from an XML document, and to generate new XML documents. It allows you to access XML documents using a standard set of methods provided by the DOM API.

The oXML component also allows you to display an XML document in the Omnis tree list (as shown), which is well suited to displaying the hierarchical structure contained in XML documents. Click here to learn more about XML.

A working example and documentation are provided with the component. To enable the oXML plug-in, you should purchase one development license per developer, whereas deployment is free of charge.

To purchase oXML, please contact our sales team.