Communication Languages

There are some languages, that is, formally defined syntactic systems, that are not programming languages but communication languages - they are designed specifically to facilitate communication through standardization. In 2003 the most important of these are UML, XML, and SQL. You should have some familiarity with all of these so that you can communicate well and decide when to use them.

UML is a rich formal system for making drawings that describe designs. Its beauty lies in that it is both visual and formal, capable of conveying a great deal of information if both the author and the audience know UML. You need to know about it because designs are sometimes communicated in it. There are very helpful tools for making UML drawings that look very professional. In a lot of cases UML is too formal, and I find myself using a simpler boxes and arrows style for design drawings. But I'm fairly sure UML is at least as good for you as studying Latin.

XML is a standard for defining new standards. It is not a solution to data interchange problems, though you sometimes see it presented as if it was. Rather, it is a welcome automation of the most boring part of data interchange, namely, structuring the representation into a linear sequence and parsing back into a structure. It provides some nice type- and correctness-checking, though again only a fraction of what you are likely to need in practice.

SQL is a very powerful and rich data query and manipulation language that is not quite a programming language. It has many variations, typically quite product-dependent, which are less important than the standardized core. SQL is the lingua franca of relational databases. You may or may not work in any field that can benefit from an understanding of relational databases, but you should have a basic understanding of them and the syntax and meaning of SQL.

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