Introduction to XML

Like Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), XML is a markup language and a subset of Standardized General Markup Language (SGML). XML, however, is more complete and disciplined, and allows you to define your own application-oriented markup tags. These properties make XML particularly suitable for data interchange.

You can generate XML-formatted documents from data stored in Sybase IQ and, conversely, store data extracted from XML documents in Sybase IQ. Many of the XML tools needed to generate and process XML documents are written in Java. Java in Sybase IQ provides a good base for XML-SQL applications using both universal and application-specific tools.

This appendix first discusses XML and how to use XML in an Sybase IQ database. It then presents examples to use as guidelines for using XML in your Sybase IQ database.