From unstructured HTML to structured XML: how XML supports financial knowledge management on the Internet

Reports the benefits of using extensible markup language (XML) to support knowledge management of financial information. Current search engines cannot provide sufficient performance to support users of financial information, which includes both non‐structured items and well‐structured items. For investors, making a high‐quality decision sometimes requires both. XML can help by providing tags to create structure. XML provides a vendor‐neutral approach. XML authors can create arbitrary tags to describe the format or structure of data, and are not restricted to the tags in the specification for HTML. A prototype XML‐based Electronic Financial Filing System (ELFFS‐XML) has been developed to illustrate how to apply XML to model and add value to traditional HTML‐based financial information by cross‐linking related information from different data sources. Compares the functionality of XML‐based ELFFS with the original HTML‐based ELFFS and SEDAR, an electronic filing system used in Canada, and recommends some directions for future development of similar electronic filing systems.