eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language that is used to store and transport data. It was designed to be both human-readable and machine-readable, and is the most widely used language for data exchange on the web. XML is a text-based format, meaning it uses plain text characters to represent data. This makes it easy to read and write, as well as being platform independent.
XML was created in 1996 by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as a way of standardizing the exchange of data between different systems. It has since become one of the most popular formats for exchanging information over the internet, and is used in many different applications such as web services, RSS feeds, and document formats. XML documents are made up of elements which contain data or other elements. These elements can be nested within each other to create a hierarchical structure that can be easily understood by both humans and machines.
The main purpose of XML is to provide a way for different systems to communicate with each other without having to understand each other’s specific data formats or programming languages. This makes it possible for different systems to share information without having to go through complex conversion processes or manual coding. XML also provides a way for developers to create their own custom markup languages that can be used in specific applications or websites.
XML documents are made up of tags which define how the data should be structured and interpreted by an application or system. These tags are written using angle brackets (<>) and contain attributes which provide additional information about the element they are associated with. For example, an element might have an attribute called “name” which contains the name of the element itself. XML also supports namespaces which allow multiple elements with similar names but from different sources to coexist within an XML document without causing conflicts between them.
In addition to providing a way for different systems to communicate with each other, XML also provides features such as validation which allows developers to check if an XML document conforms to certain standards before it is processed by an application or system. This helps ensure that only valid documents are processed, reducing errors and improving reliability when exchanging data between systems.
XML has become one of the most popular formats for exchanging information over the internet due its flexibility, ease of use, and wide range of features that make it suitable for many different types of applications and websites. It has been adopted by many organizations around the world as their preferred format for exchanging data between systems, making it one of the most important technologies in modern computing today.
