General
Complimentary Formats
Activity XML (AXM) is another XML format for transferring activity data with summary and detailed series of measurements that describe the activity.
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AXM was created to transport formatted measurement data with the goal of keeping thin clients thin. This means that most of the logic is done by a smart back end web service providing re-usability in addition to using proven programming languages found on the server (i.e. not javascript).
AXM measurement extension is extremely flexible. This flexibility will allow developers to extend the data without changing the schema.
In addition to measurement flexibility, AXM provides data in a "preferred" way. This means that measurements not only are transferred in the value representing a unit of measurement, but also provides the preferred way to display that value already removing unwanted decimals, adding commas and periods where they belong for the language of choice.
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Developers wishing to transport Activity data to a client for display purposes.
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Yes it is. AXM does not recommend any user interface preferences at all. Instead, it provides the formatted data which may be displayed anywhere in any format. The style and view is entirely up to the client. Fortunately the client won't have to localize or convert any of the measurements into the user's preferences like locale, preferred units of measurement and number formatting.
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Currently, AXM is being used only by the MotionBased User Interface Library. Specifically the new Map Player.
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GPS. Exactly. AXM is in no way coupled to GPS data. Latitude and Longitude are treated like any measurement that may be provided. Garmin GPS devices do a lot more than GPS and the ability to report data without location is becoming increasingly important (heart rate, cadence, etc).
AXM can be easily translated into GPX. GPX can be translated into AXM with a little extra work (summary data is required).
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Yes. GeoRSS is an extension to RSS that provides location, however, RSS is better for reporting news than disciplined measurements like AXM. Like GPX GeoRSS is more focused on location than measurements in general.
AXM will support some of what GeoRSS reports, however, they are very different formats. The content in AXM can produce a reasonable RSS feed using some techniques to turn measurements in paragraphs.
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Google Earth is a great tool and KML is quite powerful. KML was designed for the Google Earth application and supports a lot of features that AXM will not (display information like color, etc).
Additionally KML reports measurements in comma separated format. Although this is efficient developers lose the ability to use XPATH to find related measurements. AXM reports related measurements in a sample.
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Yes. In fact the MotionBased team has helped defined much of the current Training Center Schema. TCX is easier to use for transporting data since developers don't have to worry about handling units of measurement when parsing the XML.
TCX should be used to transport data between servers/clients. AXM should be used to transport formatted data from advanced web services (like MotionBased Web API) to thin clients (like the MotionBased User Interface Library for web browsers).
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Yeah, that's what we thought too. Our deprecated MotionBased XML (MBX) is an implementation of GML 3.0, but GML has come on gone without adoption because of its complexity. Essentially they tried to be too many things to too many developers.
Activity XML is inspired by GML, but is simplified to work with the normal uses of measurement transport and not every last detail of describing location data.
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MBX was based on GML. The MotionBased Map Player 1.0 was build on MBX as is the MotionBased Agent 2 series. AXM could simply be looks at as MBX 3.0, however, using the name Activity is more appropriate and does not tie the Garmin brand to an open exchange format.
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