Sharing data presents both an opportunity as well as a problem. How do separate entities share data in an agreed upon fashion? How can organizations from different industries share common related information? The answer is XML, the Extensible Markup Language. We saw XML back in Project 1, Building Great Web3D, with X3D, which used XML to define a 3D graphics file format. In the vast world of news, the XML standard is RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS can be any news item—print media, People magazine, stock prices, sports reporting, and press releases. Look at nearly any news or text website, and there will likely be a small XML or RSS link or the icon.

This is data sharing in action. While there might be copyright issues on repurposing this information, it is made available to be shared. We can save this RSS file, which often has the .xml file ending, or grab the data directly off the Internet. Either way, we now need to parse the data in order to extract the header...