What is Atom?
Issues were raised regarding the RSS 2.0 format and its incompatibility problems. That is why a third standard of syndication was born.
The atom format started in June of 2003. It was adopted by the Internet Engineering task Force or IETF. This format was made to solve the shortcomings of the RSS versions that were released.
RFC 4287 states the proposition of Atom’s standardization.
- Strengths
Atom supporters claim that the strength of Atom relies on:
1. Use of standard features of XML;
2. The presence of a payload container capable of handling various content types.
With Atom, owners can actually monitor more sites in lesser time.
- Uses of Atom
Atom, like any other syndication formats, is used on sites that update periodically. These items include web logging, advertisement, marketing, news and bug reports.
- Atom and RSS: What’s the deal?
Atom included features that are not present or mandatory in RSS such as:
- XML schema
- auto discovery
- XML name space
- unique global ID
- payload container
- separate content and summary entities
- openness to modification and standardization