You can’t ignore Extensible Markup Language much longer. This new technology provides an inexpensive means for proprietary applications to exchange data, and it’s likely to become the primary language for doing business on the Web.
If you’re not familiar with Extensible Markup Language (XML), it’s time to get to know this new technology. Many industry analysts think XML will be key to the future of e-business. This language was born in an initiative undertaken by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The consortium set out to develop a standard language that could simultaneously present content for display on the Internet and describe the content so that other software could understand and use the data. As a result, XML has the potential to serve as a medium through which any business application can share documents, transactions and workflow with any other business application. It’s the heir apparent to electronic data interchange’s (EDI’s) position as the primary means for executing business transactions across the Internet, so as you’re shopping for e-business software, look for products that support XML.
Today, when you view a Web page in a browser, you’re almost certainly looking at a hypertext markup language (HTML) file. HTML uses a standard set of "tags," labels that describe the way text and graphics should be rendered by your browser. For example, the HTML tags <u> and </u> tell browsers to begin underlining and end underlining, respectively, so the HTML line <u>$50.00</u> tells a Web browser to display the text "$50.00." HTML is good for formatting text that goes online, but its tags don’t provide information about the meaning of the data. Suppose, for example, that you’re viewing an invoice on a supplier’s Web site and that the underlined $50.00 is the total amount due. The HTML code doesn’t indicate this important fact; it just describes how to display the Web page.
A Financial Report in XML
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The report below shows part of an income statement generated by the FRx Visual Report Writer with month-to-date and year-to-date columns:
IncStmt FilmWorks Demo
Income Statement
For the Eight Months Ending Aug. 31, 1996
August YTD
Revenue
Sales
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$1,063,650
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$7,966,746
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Sales Returns
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8,622
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63,952
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Sales Discounts
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28,738
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213,157
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Net Sales
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1,026,290
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7,689,637
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The code below shows how the same report looks formatted in its XML source code:
[Report selection criteria and header data]
<report rpt_id="0" include_tree="false" rpt_model="single-file model">
<rpt_nm>INCSMT</rpt_nm>
<rpt_ver>1.00</rpt_ver>
<rpt_desc>Income Statement</rpt_desc>
<rpt_range>For the Eight Months Ending</rpt_range>
<rpt_type>unknown</rpt_type>
<rpt_created_dt>7/21/98 5:11:14 AM</rpt_created_dt>
<rpt_run_dt>8/27/99 7:29:28 AM</rpt_run_dt>
<rpt_for_dt>35308</rpt_for_dt>
<rpt_headers>
<rpt_header row_no="1" pos="align_left" type="text" font="1">IncStmt</rpt_header>
<rpt_header row_no="1" pos="align_center" type="text" font="2">_C</rpt_header>
<rpt_header row_no="2" pos="align_center" type="text" font="3">Income Statement</rpt_header>
<rpt_header row_no="3" pos="align_center" type="text" font="3">_D</rpt_header>
</rpt_headers>
<rpt_unit unit_no="1" unit_cd="Report" level="10" co_cd="FW" printed="true">
[The report starts here.]
Report
<financials>
[Description row "Revenue"]
<fin_row no="1" row_tp="CBR" act_det="f" act_set="f" option="0">
<c_dets />
</fin_row>
<fin_row no="2" row_tp="DES" act_det="f" act_set="f" font="4" option="0">
<desc>Revenue</desc>
<c_dets>
<c_det no="1" amt="">Revenue</c_det>
</c_dets>
</fin_row>
<fin_row no="3" row_tp="DES" act_det="f" act_set="f" option="0">
<c_dets />
[Sales Amount row]
</fin_row>
<fin_row no="4" row_tp="GL" act_det="f" act_set="f" option="2">
<desc>Sales</desc>
<c_dets>
<c_det no="1" amt="">Sales</c_det>
<c_det no="2" amt="10636500000">1063650</c_det>
<c_det no="3" amt="79667460000">7966746</c_det>
</c_dets>
[Sales Return row]
</fin_row>
<fin_row no="5" row_tp="GL" act_det="f" act_set="f" option="1">
<desc>Sales Returns</desc>
<c_dets>
<c_det no="1" amt="">Sales Returns</c_det>
<c_det no="2" amt="86220000">8622</c_det>
<c_det no="3" amt="639520000">63952</c_det>
</c_dets>
[Sales Discounts row]
</fin_row>
<fin_row no="6" row_tp="GL" act_det="f" act_set="f" option="1">
<desc>Sales Discounts</desc>
<c_dets>
<c_det no="1" amt="">Sales Discounts</c_det>
<c_det no="2" amt="287380000">28738</c_det>
<c_det no="3" amt="2131570000">213157</c_det>
</c_dets>
</fin_row>
<fin_row no="7" row_tp="US" act_det="f" act_set="f" option="0">
<c_dets />
</fin_row>
[Sales Total row]
<fin_row no="7" row_tp="US" act_det="f" act_set="f" option="0">
<c_dets />
</fin_row>
<fin_row no="8" row_tp="TOT" act_det="f" act_set="f" font="5" option="1">
<desc>Net Sales</desc>
<c_dets>
<c_det no="1" amt="">Net Sales</c_det>
<c_det no="2" amt="10636500000">1026290</c_det>
<c_det no="3" amt="79667460000">7689637</c_det>
</c_dets>
<c_dets />
</fin_row>
</financials>
</rpt_unit>
</report>
[End of report]
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