The Web As An Application

A major motivation for adding hypermedia directly to XML is that from a certain perspective, the Web at large is an application. That is, a single distributed federated application, involving millions of servers, clients, programs etc. Words fail to describe this application.

Some references:

Wikipedia entry for World Wide Web: "The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not the same. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the web is one of the services that runs on the Internet. It is a collection of text documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, usually accessed by web browsers from web servers. In short, the web can be thought of as an application "running" on the Internet."

Interestingly, the major reason given by the w3c for rejecting XML hypermedia affordances is that XML is a notational mechanism, not an application language, from here: "Linking is an application-level bit of semantics, not a notational mechanism."

While the defense of XML is generally appropriate, deeper consideration should be given to XML hypermedia, given the nature of the Web as an application. So, even if XML is only a notational mechansim (is this true?), it already contains some application semantics, including: xml:base, xml:lang, xml:space, xml:id. Given the nature of the application under discussion (the Web), special consideration needs to be given.