Tech Primer

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

What is RSS?

Really Simple Syndication belongs to the family of lightweight XML (Extensible Markup Language) standards. RSS is designed to combine information from various Web sites in one place. It is a collection of XML-based Web content used by news Web sites, blogs, and podcasts for publishing on the Internet.

How has RSS evolved?

Dave Winer, the founder of Userland Software, designed his own XML format in 1997 for syndicating his scripting news weblog. RSS was created by Dan Libby in 1999 and was used on the My Netscape portal. The two RSS ancestries are RSS 1.0 that works in accordance by the set of rules described by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The RDF specification was released from RSS–DEV Working Group in 2000. RSS 2.0 was released by Harvard Law School in 2003.

How can you read RSS feeds?

RSS readers collect news in the background at intervals. A user can subscribe to numerous feeds simultaneously and save time on finding information. RSS uses software to organise the RSS feeds to get updates automatically. The active Web reader reads RSS files, organises the RSS feeds, manages the updates, and monitors the changes on the Web site that the user has subscribed to. It also searches for information. The automatic procedure to search for information on behalf of the user saves time for him as he need not visit each Web site individually. It also enables the user to avoid advertisements, menus, etc. The reader displays information in a human readable format. A powerful RSS reader built into the Mozilla Firefox browser is known as the Live Bookmark feature. RSS files have different extensions like .XML, .RSS and .RDF.

Is there a licenced version of RSS?

Licenced RSS 2.0 is offered by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School. The author of this document is Dave Winer.

What’s the technology used in RSS?

To enable RSS, six essential technologies are used: Aggregator Engine, MyST-X Scripting Engine, MgST Persistence Service, My Smart Channels, MyST XSL Transformation Service and MyST Click Director. These provide specific support to the RSS that contains up to 15 items parsed using Perl, Java and other open source software. RSS gathers information from multiple channels at one place called Aggregator. Aggregator Web sites share common goals. One of the major advantages of RSS feeds is that it makes the content from various pages available at one place. RSS also provides tools and solutions to the user to customise feeds and minimise integration efforts. It is mainly used to subscribe to weblogs and news Web sites, and can also be used to attach multimedia files. Web sites like BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet and many more are among its users. RSS is adopted on weblogs such as scripting.com. Many Web sites have discovered that RSS and XML can easily promote traffic to their sites and are switching over to this technology.

—Garima Grover

For more information visit www.newarchitectmag.com/archives/2000/02/eisenzopf/