1.3.3. XML Elements

XML elements are extensible and they have relationships.

XML elements have relationships

To understand XML terminology, you have to know how relationships between XML elements are named, and how element content is described. We still look at the Person Example:

As you can see XML elements are always related as parents and children.

XML elements are extensible

Look at the following XML example:

An XML Example

Let's imagine that we created an application that extracted the <first_name>, <last_name>, <street>, <number>, and <city> elements from the XML document to produce this output:

Application Output

Imagine that the author of the XML document added some extra information to it:

Expanded XML Example

Will the application break or crash? What do you think? The answer is given in the popup window below. (Click here for more information)