Extensible Markup Language(XML) is an open standard for describing data from the W3C. It is used for defining data elements on a Web page and business-to-business documents. XML uses a similar tag structure as HTML; however, whereas HTML defines how elements are displayed, XML defines what those elements contain. While HTML uses predefined tags, XML allows tags to be defined by the developer of the page.

So virtually any data items, such as "product," "sales rep" and "amount due," can be identified, allowing Web pages to function like database records. By providing a common method for identifying data, XML supports business-to-business transactions and has become "the" format for electronic data interchange and Web services

In a nutshell the widespread implementation of XML means that companies are now able to exchange data much more easily now. Various suppliers will now offer “web service” of XML information e.g. price feeds, news items etc .RSS for example is a popular implementation of news feeds in XML format. We have used XML both to export clients’ data to others and also to increase functionality on their own sites.

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Related Technologies

XSLT
CSV
HTML/DHTML/XHTML
AJAX

External Links

W3.org
W3.org
XML.com
W3Schools

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