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<blockquote data-quote="Fast Learner" data-source="post: 418064" data-attributes="member: 649">XML has multiple advantages, many of which have been mentioned. The key advantage for us, as I see it, is the way XML schemas work: a schema describes what the xml data you're working with is supposed to look like. As such you can interpret and &quot;understand&quot; the data based on the schema. In a sense a schema is a combination of a template and a meta data description.The goal of the d20 xml group is to create a schema that can accurately describe characters (including classless creatures, I believe). Assuming they actually come up with something (you'd be surprised how complex it can be), other schemas that would be of value would be a town/city schema, a nation schema, maybe a spell schema (though I think that's included in the d20 xml project), perhaps an &quot;encounter&quot; schema, etc.With a schema &quot;in hand&quot; an application can interpret xml data intelligently.SOAP (specifically the RPC -- Remote Procedure Call -- portion of it), as I understand it, allows you to create and pbulish a method for calling a procedure remotely (passing xml data back and forth). For example someone could write a SOAP-compatible &quot;character name server.&quot; Using the definition for this server's SOAP procedure call you could basically tell it to execute a procedure (like NewName()), along with some parameters (like &quot;race&quot; or &quot;quantity&quot; or what have you) and the server would return an xml stream containing the name (the format of which would be defined by an xml schema). Effectively it allows you to ask other applications to execute procedures and return information to you.All super-keen stuff.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Fast Learner, post: 418064, member: 649"] XML has multiple advantages, many of which have been mentioned. The key advantage for us, as I see it, is the way XML schemas work: a schema describes what the xml data you're working with is supposed to look like. As such you can interpret and "understand" the data based on the schema. In a sense a schema is a combination of a template and a meta data description. The goal of the d20 xml group is to create a schema that can accurately describe characters (including classless creatures, I believe). Assuming they actually come up with something (you'd be surprised how complex it can be), other schemas that would be of value would be a town/city schema, a nation schema, maybe a spell schema (though I think that's included in the d20 xml project), perhaps an "encounter" schema, etc. With a schema "in hand" an application can interpret xml data intelligently. SOAP (specifically the RPC -- Remote Procedure Call -- portion of it), as I understand it, allows you to create and pbulish a method for calling a procedure remotely (passing xml data back and forth). For example someone could write a SOAP-compatible "character name server." Using the definition for this server's SOAP procedure call you could basically tell it to execute a procedure (like NewName()), along with some parameters (like "race" or "quantity" or what have you) and the server would return an xml stream containing the name (the format of which would be defined by an xml schema). Effectively it allows you to ask other applications to execute procedures and return information to you. All super-keen stuff. [/QUOTE]

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