XML Upgrade

What is XML?

Means Extensible Markup Language and aimed to store and transfer data.
XML is not HTML (HyperText Markup Language ), which is used to display the data only.
XML is transferable between different applications.
(w3school, 2013)

Why XML?

Freeland is going to implement online booking and consultation systems, which requires the website to have interaction with the database on the server side. By having XML it can help the data to transfer smoothly between the server and the website front end.

How?

Rewrite the website to separate XML and the presentation

Which Section?

Whole website, mainly focus on booking/online consultation, which will implement later this year.

Advantages:

Can create own XML tags that suit the business need (Fawcett, 2012)
Changing the presentation would not affect the data because separation of data and presentation. (Fawcett, 2012)
Can be transferred easily between different applications. (Fawcett, 2012)
Recommended by World Wide Web Consortium, the leading web standards organisation. (W3C, 2010)

Disadvantages:

Time consuming to rewrite the site
No official browser support (Fawcett, 2012)
XML file size is larger than the other data (Sadtler et al, 2004)

References

Fawcett, J. (2012). In Quin L., Ayers D. (Eds.), Beginning XML (5th ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

W3Schools. (2013). XML Tutorial. In W3Schools Online Web Tutorials. Retrieved May 13, 2013, from http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp

W3C. (2010). XML Technology. In World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved May 15, 2013 from http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/