W3C specifications for XML as a format for data representation and data exchange

[isha.agarwal]

hi everyone,does anyone know what specifications were released by W3C for XML as a format for data representation and data exchange standard? and why they did not consider microsoft excel as a format. why only XML??Thanks

[boen_robot]

What sort of data representation and data exchange you have in mind?XHTML is a format for representation that is based on XML. With XSLT, you can turn your own XML based format into XHTML or another format for data representation like FO (from which you could produce images or PDFs).The SOAP/WSDL combo is most often used for data exchange between applications, but not for people. It's intended to be used in a way that one application can invoke another application to do something, from which point the first applicaiton would do something with the result.Microsoft Excel is a microsoft format. It's a format only Microsoft have made and adjusted for their own program. A standard needs to be usable by all of it's implementers, so they all gather at W3C and agree on something they can all implement and wouldn't be tied to a particular product.