Tips n Tracks

XML – at a Glance

XML is a Markup Language stands for eXtensible Markup Language. XML is a simple, very flexible text format derived from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML – ISO 8879). Originally designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing, XML is also playing an increasingly important role in management, display, organization and the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere. The XML standard was created by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to provide an easy to use and standardized flexible way to create “self-describing data” – that describes both its content and its structure to share information on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere.

XML is text-based formats that provide mechanisms for describing document structures using markup tags (words surrounded by ‘<’ and ‘>’). XML is not really a “language” at all, but it is a standard for creating languages that meet the XML criteria. In other words, XML describes a syntax that you use to create your own languages. XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium. It is a totally free open standard which is a platform-neutral technology. The W3C recommendation specifies both the lexical grammar, and the requirements for parsing.

XML isn’t here to replace what’s already on the Web, but to create a more solid and flexible foundation. The reason is because XML is not entirely about web pages. In fact, XML in the purest sense really has nothing to do with the Web, and can be used to represent any kind of information on any kind of computer. The main goals of XML is to separate the meaning of information from the presentation. XML describes data better than HTML. HTML is a relatively unstructured markup language that could benefit from the rules of XML. The natural merger of the two technologies is to make HTML adhere to the rules and structure of XML result in XHTML. XHTML helps to implement a more structured and standardized web standards “Web 2.0″; which is making web pages cleaner and more consistent for web browsers to display.