While XML 1.0 itself doesn't describe linking, XLink, a companion standard, does. Create centralized link hub documents that describe all the links between a set of documents. While delays in XLink's completion have helped keep XLink out of the Web browser, its recent stability promises a brighter future. Manageable Information XML's insistence on clean, clearly-marked document structures makes it possible for vendors to create systems that treat XML documents as tree structures rather than text streams. Instead of treating an XML file as a long sequence of bytes, a storage system that understands XML can store it as a set of smaller pieces, The implications of this change affect nearly every aspect of Web development, from scripting to document storage to linking.
Programmers can reliably navigate and manipulate the tree structures created by XML parsers.
This is a significant improvement from hoping that a particular browser's interpretation of a given HTML document corresponds to the the interpretation that another browser sees. XML already includes the kinds of cleanup that dynamic HTML developers have had to perform on their own documents. The clear document structures also make it much easier to reference positions within a document. XLink takes advantage of this flexibility to let developers describe links without requiring them to modify the origin and target documents. XML opens new vistas in document management and storage.