Data Communication: XML, XSLT, and JSON

An important part of any type of distributed application is how data is pushed around between tiers or layers of the application. Additionally, with Ajax, several concepts are fairly important to know and understand concepts involved with building distributed heterogeneous environments. When tied together with web services, XML and JSON allow for data interchange between different operating systems and also across the Internet. This is a major change from systems that are heavily tied together and require that each system run a specific operating system merely because of the format the data is communicated in.