l price: $175.00) */I* *B*Shipping and handling costs: $45.00 UPS Ground*/B*In the above example, the pair of *H3*, *I*, and *B* tags merely indicate that the enclosed text should appear in heading type, in Italics, or in bold font, respectively. The tags including the “/” character mean to end the heading, italics, or bold font. The tags used in this example give no hint as to what the enclosed content refers to. That is not a problem for human readers. It is a problem for a search engine or automated “shopbot” program seeking out the lowest price for the overpriced college textbook on the World Wide Web. They would have to be very “smart” to say the least to figure out which amount is the true selling price. Because there is no standard method of specifying the information through the use of the HyperText Markup Language, different World Wide Web sites will display the prices in different ways. Now, the Extensible Markup Language version of the same overpriced college textbook sale example:*PRICE type = “SALE” unit = “US Dollar”* 135.00 */PRICE* *PRICE type ‘ “RETAIL” unit = “US Dollar” 175.00 */PRICE* *SHIPPING type = “UPS Ground” unit = “US Dollar”* 45.00 */SHIPPING*The tags used in the above example clearly identify the sale price, the retail or regular price, the shipping cost, the shipping method, and the currency type. It is important to note that the book name and other text specific items would be contained in the XSL document (Style Sheet). This is the document that defines how the information will be formatted for viewing. Again, more on this shortly.Considering the above example, a Extensible Markup Language-enabled search engine or bot can readily and easily interpret such tags, especially if they are standardized for a particular product category or industry. Standardization, however, could prove to be a huge...
