ABSTRACT: XML and its Many Children: Bringing Order to a Digital World

Andrew Updegrove, Partner, Gesmer Updegrove LLP

12/23/2009
(Original Publish Date: 11/1/2009)

Prior to the advent of computers, information was necessarily stored in tangible media that was searchable and understandable only through visual examination. With the advent of the Internet, both the opportunity and the challenge of automated access to knowledge were magnified a billion times. In the 1990s, it became clear that the riches of digitized data could only be mined if elements of text could be identified in such a way that they could be readily exchanged between computer systems of any type without losing knowledge of their own format and structure. Moreover, by permanently "tagging" elements of text with semantic, as well as formatting information, the data in documents could become self-aware, allowing information to be more intelligently searched, manipulated, and compiled. The mechanism invented to achieve this end was a standard called the Extensible Markup Language (XML), a tool that was strict enough to achieve the interoperable exchange of information, but flexible enough to allow the creation of a derivative based language to order and make greater sense of any domain of knowledge. In this article, I describe the origins, development and impact of XML, and the standards development organizations that maintain and continue to develop these essential tools of the Digital Age.