Advantages to Using XML Based CMS

Howdy y'all,

I've used a couple "CMS" in the past few years, and now I'm working for a company that uses Autonomy's Teamsite. They are using this with Java, JOSQL, and XML (DCR's). What is the advantage, if any, of using XML and XSLT (which is nice, but ... ) in this scenario? I just can't wrap my head around it.

Thanks for any insight.

 

Hope this can help:

LUiD CMS is XML-Based So It’s Ready for Change

XML, which stands for eXtensible Markup Language, is an industry standard for data representation and exchange through the Internet. Whereas HTML was designed as a language to create and display Web pages in a browser, XML was created to support the publishing of multiple forms of media including HTML Web pages.​

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FLUiD CMS can be configured to publish your content into to many different formats—including a Web site. ​

This makes it the ideal technology for today's evolving Web Sites and Information Portals—as new devices and formats are continually emerging, raw XML content can be expressed in multiple output formats.​

FLUiD CMS is XML-Based So It’s Universally Supported ​

There are four main reasons why XML has been universally adopted:​

XML is Open Standard — XML is an extension of HTML, and its standards are published and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). As such, it has the backing of all the major industry players, including HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun. ​

XML Holds the Meaning of Content—Whereas HTML is concerned only with cosmetic layout, XML holds the meaning of data by keeping design separate from content. This enables computer applications to operate more intelligently when exchanging data, or indexing, or searching for data.​

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FLUiD CMS separates content from design so each page on your Web site automatically inherits your branding. ​

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XML is Flexible—XML defines the relationship between data elements as a flexible tree structure. Unlike a conventional database, nodes in this structure can be extended wherever needed, akin to adding new folders within a PC file structure.​

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XML + XSL +(optional) Parameters = Output ​

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XML is Descriptive—XML is a language that can describe many other languages. This means that documents described in XML can be converted to many other formats, including HTML for Web browsers, WML for wireless devices and PDF for printed documents. This is accomplished with XSLT. In XML-based CMS systems, XSLT provides the ability to select specific sections of one or more XML documents, and then return this data in any desired format, such as HTML, WML, PDF, or some other XML format for syndication. This is important because XML does not describe how content appears, but rather what it is about. You need XSLT to make your XML content human-consumable and sharable with others’ applications. Mechanically, an XSL transformation relies on two critical ingredients and an optional third ingredient:​

• An XML document to transform​
• An XSL stylesheet describing how the transformation will take place​
• Values for optional parameters that the stylesheet may contain​

An XSLT engine then transforms the XML document via the XSL stylesheet, producing output in the format specified by the stylesheet.​

FLUiD CMS is XML-Based So It’s a Wise Investment ​

There are strong arguments for investing in XML-based solutions:​

Protect Your Investment in Content —Your investment into the content of your Web system, over time, will develop an asset of considerable value. Storing this valuable content in XML, rather than in some closed proprietary format, enables easy exchange with other systems. This includes migration to future technologies so that the resources that went into creating your Web system will not be wasted. ​

Prepare for Evolving Standards —Web sites built with XML technologies are capable of adapting. They can express the same raw XML content in new and varied formats without substantial re-investment. As standards change, or as additional publishing formats are needed, the FLUiD system can be easily upgraded to meet these new demands. ​

Share Information Effectively Using RSS —An XML-based Web system will take advantage of the power of information sharing between applications using technologies such as Web Services. Syndicating your content using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is one such example of the power of XML. FLUiD CMS has the ability to generate RSS syndication streams that can feed customers and other Web sites with your latest information. RSS is an XML specification for content syndication that allows your company to feed key information to other Web sites in the form of a headline, a short description and a link to the actual location of the information. Other sites essentially subscribe to a news feed of your latest information, with links from the headline on their Web site to the full story on your Web site. RSS therefore allows for multiple access points to content within your site.




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Thank you for your answer. I understand about xml and xslt and how it can be used to deliver the same content in different ways. However, any good scripting language (I like PHP) and DB can do the same thing. You just make different templates to deliver the data in different ways. PHP can even be used to convert the data to make xml. Again, I thank you for your answer, but how is xslt any better or more efficient than PHP (or other scripting language)? Again, because I'm more familiar with PHP, PHP has classes for making PDF's. If the xml is generated and then cached in chunks, then I can see a savings, but again, you can do the same thing with PHP.

 

As for its use in a CMS, there isn't going to be a big advantage over using a database. Actually, searching through XML IMO is a big disadvantage. But comparing it to PHP is incorrect. Compare it to a database as it really is data storage, data structure versus a programming language. XML's real advantage lies in being an exchange format to pass data from different sources and as you pointed to create multiple document types from a single format.

The situations where XML in a CMS are better than using a database would be small sites or ones where you want them to be expanded easily. As an example, let's say you had an XML based site and wanted to add an additional field where users could add comments or links to an article. With a traditional Database you would have to create either additional fields or tables to hold those. With XML you could simply write the code to add the fields and store them in XML. That could be done dynamically and on demand. And I know its really simple to go add tables/records to mysql but you would have to either add the code into your script (and have permissions set to enable those modifications) or go do it via phpmyadmin. With XML it could be done without leaving the script you are working on.

That example also illustrates what I'm talking about with comparing it to PHP. In both cases PHP is used, PHP & XML or PHP & MySQL. In the case of document transformations, PHP could be used but XML would be the base format used. And the long term storage of the original content could very well be in a database.

With a small site the advantage is overhead. It's going to be less resource intense to serve up 5 pages of content using XML versus using a database.

Using it as an exchange format it usually competes with JSON with most preferring JSON over XML. I'll skip that debate and just say that XML is a decent format for data exchange. For things like AJAX or XML-RPC, it does a fine job of encapsulating the data.


I'm not a real fan of XML based CMS. In some cases I can some advantages.

 

Very happy for helping you. But in this case, i can not help u. Hope the othes can help u.

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Sorry for the miscommunication, but I meant PHP for XSL(T) and MySQL as data storage. Thanks for the replies.