Client Server Model

API

An API or Application Program Interface is a set of routines enabling one program to interface with each other. The code defines how the programs work together.

Twitter has an API to allow other programs to use the service.

CRUD

Data must be stored, managed and represented correctly
CRUD is an acronym to explain the main processes required
-Create
-Retrieve
-Update
-Delete
All are needed to have a complete working database
SQL and Relational Databases conform to CRUD:
Insert , Select, Update, Delete

XML

XML or Extensible Markup Language is a programming language used to define data types. The code uses tags represented as angled brackets <> and </> to signify the beginning and end of a segment of data of the type defined in the tags.

e.g.

<customers>

  <customer>
     <name> Eddie </name>
     <address> 16 Wilson Grove </address>
  </customer>

</customers> This defines a parent data type <customers> containing one or more <customer> which contains <name> and <address>.

XML vs JSON

	JSON	XML
Human Readable	It's easy to read because it's just defining objects and values.	Less readable because it's contained within markup tags
Compact Code	Less code than XML	More code than JSON
Speed of Parsing	Quicker, because it's defined as object and value	Slower, because the data has to be extracted from tags
Ease of Creation	Easier, because syntax is easier	More like programming so more knowledge is needed.
Flexibility & Extendibilty	Only works with limited data types, not enough for all applications	Gives total freedom, because you can create what data types there are, so it has greater flexibility