W3C Publishes New Editions of Core XML Standards

Improvements clarify, complete foundation of XML family

 

http://www.w3.org/ -- 16 August 2006 -- W3C would like to thank the XML Core Working Group for their service to the community in caring for the XML 1.0/1.1 and Namespaces in XML 1.0/1.1 specifications. Today, W3C publishes new editions of these standards for data exchange that include corrections for all known errata and clarifications where there was some potential for misunderstanding. The strong foundation provided by the stability of these core XML specifications underlies the steady increase in W3C-defined technologies for querying, transforming, displaying, encrypting, and optimizing XML.

XML Everywhere

XML is used to exchange information in many domains and scenarios. VoiceXML, MathML, SVG, RSS, Web3D, RDF/XML, XMP, XUL, SOAP, Ajax, and Jabber/XMPP are just a few XML-based technologies. Popular productivity suites such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice use XML. XML is cited by an increasing number of specifications, including ISO specifications.

Why has XML been so successful? To start, it is a structured text format that is easily processed by computers, but also by humans, who can "view the source" and take inspiration from it or debug it with readily available tools. XML thus simplifies the tasks of creating and maintaining software. As a platform-independent open standard that supports efficient parsing, XML was quickly supported in libraries for popular programming languages (including Java, C#, Python, Perl, and C) and subsequently in free and open source applications. W3C appreciates the active discussion forums about XML such as xml-dev, which have helped improve and propagate the standards. The global adoption of XML was further enabled by its support for internationalization; XML 1.1 extends and simplifies XML 1.0's support for users from around the world. The XML family of technologies (including XSLT, XML Schema, SAX, Document Object Model (DOM), and XML Signature/ Encryption) constitute a complete and economical toolkit for data management, contributing further to its success.

W3C's Commitment to the Future of XML

W3C is strongly committed to the future of XML. By the end of 2006, W3C expects to publish W3C Recommendations for XML Query 1.0 and XSLT 2.0. W3C is revising XML Schema, heavily used in SOAP-based Web services, and planning additions to XML Query beyond the 1.0 version. The XML Processing Model Working Group will soon publish the first draft of an XML language for specifying sequences of operations on XML documents, such as transformation, validation, inclusion and decryption, based on existing XML pipeline products and free and open source designs.

Generic compression techniques can be applied to XML documents, but a number of XML-specific technologies for improving the efficiency of XML storage, transmission and processing have been developed. W3C has chartered a Working Group on Efficient XML Interchange to expand the outreach of XML into further domains that require even greater performance and additional capabilities such as streaming.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan,and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

 

Contact Americas, Australia --

Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613

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Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94

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