What is XML?

If you need to exchange structured information between applications, XML (Extensible Markup Language) provides a standard text based format.

Unlike HTML, which describes how information should be displayed, XML describes the structure of the information itself.

A simple XML document might look like this:

<Customer>
    <Name>John Doe</Name>
    <City>Helsinki</City>
</Customer>

Applications can read and process XML regardless of the programming language used to create it.

Because XML is plain text, documents are easy to exchange across different operating systems and platforms.

XML is expected to become an important technology for data interchange, configuration files, and Internet applications.

Handy when storing or exchanging structured information.

XML is now a W3C recommendation. I believe we will hear a lot more about XML in the coming years.