XML is a mark up language for documents containing structured information with a mechanism to identify structures in the document. Structured information may contain any type of content.

Structure of XML ensures no dependency on any database system, operating system or browser. XML being self documented, is suitable for transfer and storage of any kind of data.

XML is being widely used by developers to deliver dynamic contents from a wide range of applications. XML has changed the way data is stored, transferred, shared or presented to the user. Many application programming interfaces (APIs) have been developed that software developers use to process XML data, and several schema systems exist to aid in the definition of XML-based languages.

Advantages of XML:

• XML supports a wide variety of applications.
• XML processes documents, so it is easy to write programs in XML.
• XML documents are human-legible and reasonably clear.
• The XML designs can be prepared quickly.
• The design of XML is formal and concise.
• XML documents are easy to create

 

What can be done with XML:
XML files are not intended to be read directly by humans, rather, they are intended to be parsed by a computer. Some types of XML are converted into human-readable form like RSS feeds and others are used internally by computers and the user doesn’t even know that they are there (such as bank transactions, customer information, credit card transactions, purchase orders).

XML can be used to exchange data between Web server and browser or between trading partners without the existing systems needing any prior description of the data’s structure. XML is easy to convert further into different formats as required: e.g. HTML, PDF, and plain text. In Web applications, XML is also used to reduce server load and hits.