Extensible Markup Language ( XML ) 1.0, W3C Recommendation 26 November 2008. Extensible Markup Language, abbreviated XML, describes a class of data objects called XML documents and partially describes the behavior of computer programs which process them. XML is an application profile or restricted form of SGML, the Standard Generalized Markup Language [ISO 8879]. By construction, XML documents are conforming SGML documents. XML was created to structure, store, and transport information. XML is just information wrapped in tags. Someone must write a piece of software to send, receive or display it. XML language has no predefined tags. XML allows the author to define his/her own tags and his/her own document structure. If you need to display dynamic data in your HTML document, it will take a lot of work to edit the HTML each time the data changes. With XML, data can be stored in separate XML files. This way you can concentrate on using HTML for layout and display, and be sure that changes in the underlying data will not require any changes to the HTML. With a few lines of JavaScript code, you can read an external XML file and update the data content of your web page. In the real world, computer systems and databases contain data in incompatible formats. XML data is stored in plain text format. This provides a software - and hardware - independent way of storing data. This makes it much easier to create data that can be shared by different applications.

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