Data Integration Blog -

But having lots of different mark-up standards and thousands of different API standards was also a bad idea for so many reasons. And that’s why XML was invented. In fact, I’d argue that, since the dawn of computing, the only really big innovation in data at the nuts and bolts level, has been XML; the eXtensible Mark-up Language. If I could name the man who invented it, I’d declare him a computing genius, but actually it wasn’t the work of a single man and there are disputes as to who should get most credit for it, so let’s not go there.

The big deal about XML is the X. It really is an extensible language, and not only that it’s a well-thought-out extensible language. You can use it to define data usage standards for any new context. It’s actually a kind of standards definition language, that allows you to define “markups or directives” for any given situation.

XML provided a means for data to carry its instructions “on the box” in a standard way. And in doing so, it provided a conceptually simple and very practical view of data for us.

There are only three things:
• program code
• raw data (the data types)
• usage instructions

So there’s no need to think in terms of structured data, unstructured data and partly structured data when we have XML. With XML, all data can declare its structure and even define how it should be processed.

From The Bottom Up
Of course, the reality out there is that most data is not defined using XML and most program interfaces do not abide by any standard. So to answer the original question, “What is data?” in practical terms, we are obliged to say:

“It’s a very large digitized collection of poorly organized, structured, partly structured and unstructured information.”