Atom and Atom Syndication Format

Atom syndication format is an XML format for platform independent exchange of information. Atom Publishing Protocol devised for creating, editing Web resources. In simple words, Atom is an umbrella terminology that offers the ability to edit and distribute web content or distribute content as XML format.

Atom Syndication Format

Atom Syndication Format is the most commonly implemented format among the atomic standards. Atom Syndication Format is like succeeder of RSS Feed. It is the modern form of a newsletter .

Atom came out from the need to combine the advantages of different RSS formats into a new format and to add new elements. The current version of the Atom syndication format is of 11th December 2005. Most major feed generators are currently support the format. The MIME type of atom application/atom+xml. It is important to know – compiling information in a standardized exchange format is called aggregation.

Different types of content based on Atom

The main difference between Atom versus RSS is a possibility of the first that it can be specified explicitly in content bearing elements which are encoded in the format of the content. In RSS 2.0, for example the description element of pure text or HTML are without a post processing by the RSS content generator software. Atom API can be used with a client application like a Weblog software and the data can be stored as SQL content.