ATOM is an emerging web content syndication standard. Currently RSS 2.0 is the most deployed syndication format, but ATOM could quickly overtake that. The RSS 2.0 spec is now frozen, with any new development on the standard to be done under a new name.
ATOM provides some features that are suppose to overcome some of the shortcommings of RSS. RSS suffers some from the efforts to make RSS backward compatible with old versions of RSS.
ATOM requires that all feeds and ATOM entries have a globally unique identifer(GUID). There are lots of ways to create a GUID, but the method that I have chosen to use for this site is one designed by Mark Pilgrim. You can find the detailed directions at: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id.
So here is the jist of creating the GUID used in this site with the tag URI method:
The key pieces used are my domain name, the feed or entry creation date, and the unique identifier for the feed information in the database. The GUID would look something like this:
tag:345software.com,2005-09-21:/rss.php?feed=1&item=1
Feed is the current RSS feed and items is the RSS item in that feed.
ATOM provides some features that are suppose to overcome some of the shortcommings of RSS. RSS suffers some from the efforts to make RSS backward compatible with old versions of RSS.
ATOM requires that all feeds and ATOM entries have a globally unique identifer(GUID). There are lots of ways to create a GUID, but the method that I have chosen to use for this site is one designed by Mark Pilgrim. You can find the detailed directions at: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/28/howto-atom-id.
So here is the jist of creating the GUID used in this site with the tag URI method:
The key pieces used are my domain name, the feed or entry creation date, and the unique identifier for the feed information in the database. The GUID would look something like this:
tag:345software.com,2005-09-21:/rss.php?feed=1&item=1
Feed is the current RSS feed and items is the RSS item in that feed.
ATOM Spec
September 24th, 2005
ATOM will become a large part of web delivery in the near future. Currently the ATOM syndication format hasn't had strong penetration into the mainstream syndication community, but that could all change in the very near future. With the RSS 2.0 Standard locked, with any new development to be done under a different name, ATOM could very well take RSS place as the leading web syndication format.