Detailed introduction to the advantages of XML in Web applications

The Web began as a simple website (a platform for information intermediaries and information release). With the rapid development of the Internet, Intranent, and Extranet, it has developed into a major platform for various applications. The Web has had a profound impact in the fields of commerce, industry, banking, finance, education, government, etc. This is due to the services of Web standardization, loose coupling, language neutrality, platform independence, and openness. Web services require XML (Extensible Markup Language), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol, WSDL (Web Services Description Language), and Support for the four major technical standards of UDDL (Unified Description, Discovery and Integration Protocol). Among them, UDDI, SOAP and WSDL are based on XML, so XML occupies an important position in the Web system. 1. XML Extended Markup Language##.

#The first version of XML was promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium (WSC) in February 1998. Since XML is derived from the Standard General Markup Language SGML, XML, as an extensible markup language, has now become The de facto standard for information description. Therefore, XML can easily describe risks and related attributes, so that risks can be easily analyzed and corresponding strategies can be selected. Many softwares provide support for XML, and XML can be used by different users. A standard language for data exchange between heterogeneous application systems to achieve transparency in data exchange. Currently, the de facto standards for secure communication on the Internet are Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). ). TLS and SSL do not have the mechanism to encrypt part of the exchanged data and secure conversations between multiple parties (more than two parties), while XML covers the security requirements.

2. Advantages of XML Risk Description in the Web. Risks in applications

Risks in the Web

Risks in the Web are mainly divided into security vulnerabilities and threat attacks from a technical perspective. Security vulnerabilities mainly include hardware defects, software defects and unreasonable configuration; Threat attacks use security vulnerabilities to damage systems. Risks are not isolated. One threat often consists of several threats, and one attack can lead to other attacks. These require better risk description tools. Advantages of XML risk description

Traditional risk descriptions mainly include relational database descriptions suitable for standardized data and relatively standardized data, and ontology descriptions suitable for non-standardized knowledge. Relational databases are inconvenient to expand, and the relationship between risks is not easy. It is difficult to design a relational table using binary relationships, and it is difficult to describe the ontology. It is difficult to determine the relationship between concepts and has poor consistency. XML combines relational databases and individual descriptions, and effectively solves the shortcomings of traditional risk descriptions. At the same time, XML Schema. It is easy to determine the format of XML documents, making risk descriptions easier to implement and effective. Format document; OASIS and OWASP have proposed their own XML-based vulnerability description languages. If you add risk discovery information, risk harm information and risk resolution information to these vulnerability descriptions. In this way, on the basis of vulnerability search and description, quantitative analysis of risk properties (probability of occurrence, attack cost, etc.) and conditions for automatic selection of strategies are added, creating the possibility of automatic system defense and automatic implementation of strategies.

3. The advantages of XML openness are reflected in Web services

Characteristics of Web Service

Web Service is a new function- and method-oriented application integration technology ; It is a standard, open application integration technology. It is based on XML documents for service descriptions, service requests and feedback results. It is based on the HTTP protocol for information transfer that is easy to access and return results. It is based on the open protocol of WSC and is independent of platforms and operating systems to achieve interoperability on different platform operating systems. , making it easy to integrate applications on heterogeneous platforms, which has promoted the rapid development of the Web. These developments have put forward higher requirements for the openness of the Web.

Advantages of XML openness

The openness of XML mainly means that it has nothing to do with the platform or the technology provider. It solves the shortcomings of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). The main disadvantage of EDI is that there is no unified international standard for the format and semantics of exchanged data. Although various countries in the world have formulated EDL standards for data exchange for different industries, in order for a system to exchange data with partners in different industries and even different countries, it has to purchase and install a variety of data conversion tools. Adaptation software plug-ins, not to mention that specific users in various industries will add more or less personalized standards when realizing these data. Therefore, the cost and complexity of using EDI technology to implement a platform system are relatively high.

Application of XML openness in Web services

The openness of XML makes the software products provided by many software manufacturers support XML, making XML a standard language for data exchange between heterogeneous application systems of different users. It has the transparency of data exchange, and each user only needs to By ensuring that the data provided by your information system complies with XML specifications, you don't have to worry about decoding issues at the data receiver. Different users use a unified agreement to interact with XML tags. The two parties of information will not be affected by the different systems used by the other party. XML can express any level of structural data nesting and can perform data correctness testing, supporting complex data exchange between users. XML Schema (XSD) defines a set of standard data types and provides a language to extend it, thereby enabling data sharing among users. Due to the characteristics of Web Service itself, XML provides guarantee for the cross-platform nature of Web Service and its transparent ability to traverse the firewalls of cooperating users.

4. Application of XML Encryption Advantages in the Web

Commonly used technologies for data protection in the Web include data encryption, digital signatures and access control. As a meta-language, XML has become An open standard for data exchange of different types and fields in a heterogeneous Web environment. The access control mechanism of XML documents is different from the general access control mechanism. The traditional access control mechanism cannot be directly applied to the access control of XML documents. This is because of the existence of XML query language (Xquery), which can directly find each XML semantic element. Access controlModel must be able to specify access rights to XML semantic elements at multiple levels of granularity. General access control has no special requirements for this.

The heterogeneous and dynamic characteristics of users accessing the Web make the traditional ID (user identity)-based authentication mechanism unsuitable for application.

Advantages of XML encryption

XML can encrypt part of the exchanged data, while TLS/SSL processing can only ensure data security during communication transmission and cannot impose different requirements on different users. permissions to ensure the security of user information, that is, TLS/SSL does not need to complete encryption of part of the exchanged data. XML encryption enables secure conversations between multiple parties, that is, each party can maintain a secure or non-secure status with any communicating party, and can exchange secure or non-secure data in the same document. XML encryption can be used as a security extension of the SOAP protocol. Because the SOAP protocol is based on XML, it can flexibly adopt appropriate encryption strategies at the application layer of message transmission by embedding encrypted XML data.

Application of XML encryption in the Web

In the Web, the XML encryption method can be embedded inside the document, and the security granularity is refined to the XML document element and attribute level to achieve the same document. Safety requirements for different parts. Through XML encryption, a document can be encrypted to present different views to different users, and users can only see the authorized part of the content.

5. Conclusion

Starting from the characteristics of XML, this article proposes three major advantages of XML, and briefly describes the application of these three major advantages in the Web from a principle perspective.

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