Plain Old XML
Encyclopedia
Plain Old XML is a term used to describe basic XML
, sometimes mixed in with other, blendable specifications like XML Namespaces
, Dublin Core
, XInclude
and XLink
. People typically use the term as a contrast with complicated, multilayered XML specifications like those for web service
s or RDF
. The term may have been derived from or inspired by the expression plain old telephone service
(a.k.a. POTS) and, similarly Plain Old Java Object
.
An interesting question is how POX relates to XML Schema. On the one hand, POX is completely compatible with XML Schema. However, many POX users eschew XML Schema to avoid the poor or inconsistent quality of XML Schema-to-Java tools.
POX is complementary to REST
: REST refers to a communication pattern, while POX refers to an information format style.
The primary competitors to POX are more strictly-defined XML-based information formats such as RDF
and SOAP section 5 encoding, as well as general non-XML information formats such as JSON
and CSV
.
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
, sometimes mixed in with other, blendable specifications like XML Namespaces
XML Namespace
xmlns tagged XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary...
, Dublin Core
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata terms are a set of vocabulary terms which can be used to describe resources for the purposes of discovery. The terms can be used to describe a full range of web resources: video, images, web pages etc and physical resources such as books and objects like artworks...
, XInclude
XInclude
XInclude is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents, by writing inclusion tags in the "main" document to automatically include other documents or parts thereof. The resulting document becomes a single composite XML Information Set...
and XLink
XLink
XML Linking Language, or XLink, is an XML markup language and W3C specification that provides methods for creating internal and external links within XML documents, and associating metadata with those links.-The XLink specification:...
. People typically use the term as a contrast with complicated, multilayered XML specifications like those for web service
Web service
A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the web.The W3C defines a "Web service" as "a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network". It has an interface described in a machine-processable format...
s or RDF
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
. The term may have been derived from or inspired by the expression plain old telephone service
Plain old telephone service
Plain old telephone service is the voice-grade telephone service that remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world....
(a.k.a. POTS) and, similarly Plain Old Java Object
Plain Old Java Object
In computing software, POJO is an acronym for Plain Old Java Object. The name is used to emphasize that a given object is an ordinary Java Object, not a special object...
.
An interesting question is how POX relates to XML Schema. On the one hand, POX is completely compatible with XML Schema. However, many POX users eschew XML Schema to avoid the poor or inconsistent quality of XML Schema-to-Java tools.
POX is complementary to REST
Representational State Transfer
Representational state transfer is a style of software architecture for distributed hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web. The term representational state transfer was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation...
: REST refers to a communication pattern, while POX refers to an information format style.
The primary competitors to POX are more strictly-defined XML-based information formats such as RDF
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
and SOAP section 5 encoding, as well as general non-XML information formats such as JSON
JSON
JSON , or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects...
and CSV
Comma-separated values
A comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable ....
.
External links
- REST and POX article from the Microsoft Developer Network
- Plain Old XML Considered Harmful from Microformats.org
- Support for POX in the Java Spring Framework
- PlainXML on SourceForge.net