4

W3C claims that

XML is one of the most widely-used formats for sharing structured information today

Does anyone know if there is any corroborating evidence (studies, reviews, etc.) for this statement?

Borror0
  • 7,581
  • 6
  • 48
  • 67
thad
  • 65
  • 2
  • 3
    I guess it's a fair question... Although for me personally, it's in the "the sky is blue" category and doesn't need proving :) – Pekka Feb 28 '12 at 15:47
  • 4
    I'd accuse XML of being the most-widely-used-in-the-wrong-places format going these days. I must now go dunk my head in a bucket of iced brine to cool my hatred of overapplied buzztechnologies. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Feb 28 '12 at 22:19
  • 2
    W3C's claim that XML is ***one of*** the most widely-used formats for sharing structured information is indisputable. But your title asks whether it's ***the*** most widely-used format. W3C isn't claiming it is... – Armen Tsirunyan Feb 28 '12 at 23:23
  • @ArmenTsirunyan: Oops. My bad. Fixed. – Borror0 Feb 28 '12 at 23:45
  • Voting to close for the reason Armen gave. – Sonny Ordell Feb 29 '12 at 00:02
  • @Sklivvz Ant build files are also xml – ratchet freak Feb 29 '12 at 00:17
  • 1
    @SonnyOrdell Sorry I've had to reopen after reading [this](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1406/if-a-claim-is-commonly-accepted-does-questioning-it-require-a-notable-counter-c). It unfortunately erased your close vote. – Sklivvz Feb 29 '12 at 00:54
  • @Sklivvz I missed what happened..., was the question closed, and then reopened? Is that answer to the question on meta now policy? – Sonny Ordell Feb 29 '12 at 02:02
  • Also my close vote is still there. It may have erased someone else's close vote. – Sonny Ordell Feb 29 '12 at 06:21

1 Answers1

9

From Wikipedia

RSS, Atom, SOAP, and XHTML are all XML. XML-based formats have become the default for many office-productivity tools, including Microsoft Office (Office Open XML), OpenOffice.org (OpenDocument), and Apple's iWork. XML has also been employed as the base language for communication protocols, such as XMPP.

XBRL is now the global standard for exchanging business information - used for tax filing, regulators, stock exchanges etc.

DocBook, ePUB, GraphML and MathML, OpenDocument, SAML and many others are all XML formats.

So to answer the "is it one of the most widely used formats" - absolutely. From the evidence I have available it appears to be the most widely used, but I don't have enough information to categorically state that.

Rory Alsop
  • 6,237
  • 3
  • 35
  • 49