Plain Old XML (POX) is the basic

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

, sometimes mixed in with other, blendable specifications like

XML Namespaces XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary. If each vocabulary ...

Dublin Core 140px, Logo of DCMI, maintenance agency for Dublin Core Terms The Dublin Core vocabulary, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Terms (DCMT), is a general purpose metadata vocabulary for describing resources of any type. It was first developed ...

, XInclude and XLink. This contrasts with complicated, multilayered XML specifications like those for

web service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

s or RDF. The term may have been derived from or inspired by the expression

plain old telephone service Plain old telephone service (POTS), or publicly offered telephone service, is basic Voice band, voice-grade telephone service. Historically, POTS has been delivered by Analog signal, analog signal transmission over copper loops, but the term also d ...

(POTS) and, similarly

Plain Old Java Object In software engineering, a plain old Java object (POJO) is an ordinary Java object, not bound by any special restriction. The term was coined by Martin Fowler, Rebecca Parsons and Josh MacKenzie in September 2000: The term "POJO" initially den ...

(POJO). An interesting question is how POX relates to

XML Schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constrai ...

. On the one hand, POX is completely compatible with XML Schema. However, many POX users eschew XML Schema to avoid the poor or inconsistent quality of XML Schema-to-Java tools. POX is complementary to

REST REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

: REST refers to a communication pattern, while POX refers to an information format style. The primary competitors to POX are more strictly-defined XML-based information formats such as RDF and SOAP section 5 encoding, as well as general non-XML information formats such as

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

and CSV.

External links

REST and POX article
from the Microsoft Developer Network
Plain Old XML Considered Harmful
from Microformats.org

in the Java Spring Framework
PlainXML on SourceForge.net
XML {{compu-lang-stub