Xml Enabled

The .NET Infrastructure and Tools build off the XML-enabled family of Windows DNA 2000 servers.

What on earth is "XML-enabled" actually supposed to mean? Does it mean the ability to parse or generate XML files? In that case, every Turing machine is XML-enabled.

-- StephanHouben (who is writing this with the XML-enabled editor VIM)

I thought that would be obvious. It means that the buzzword compliance of the infrastructure is undergoing ongoing upgradability testing.

It's actually quite simple and fair thing if you read the announcement in detail. It means that all the Windows DNA Servers will use XML as their native format. SQL Server 2000 will use XML. Commerce Server 2000 is switching from their old way to XML. BizTalk Server 2000 is complete XML and SOAP. Etc.

-- sg

OK, so I'm stupid, but I still don't get it. SQL Server is a database, isn't it? So what does it mean that is "uses" XML? It probably doesn't mean that the data is stored in an XML file (at least I hope it doesn't). Are the configuration files stored as XML? Please enlighten me.

-- StephanHouben

Answer moved from this page to SqlServer

Translation: It means it can communicate with other XML aware applications. Since XML is a pretty darn good packet structure, communication is simplified. It's like implementing interprocess drag and drop: you need some commonly accepted flexible communication standard so applications can gracefully deal with data it has never seen before. -- SunirShah

Q:What will this do as far as performance is concerned? Returning things as XML seems nice but having to parse large volumes of XML could be a very expensive operation. -- GlenStampoultzis

A: See XmlPerformance

CategoryXml | See also: ExtensibleMarkupLanguage