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XML is the eXtensible Markup Language, designed to improve the functionality of the Web by providing more flexible and adaptable information identification. XML is a cut-down version of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language, ISO 8879:1985), keeping enough of its functionality to make it useful but removing all the optional features which make SGML too complex to program for in a Web environment. XML is intended “to make it easy and straightforward to use SGML on the Web: easy to define document types, easy to author and manage SGML-defined documents, and easy to transmit and share them across the Web.” It defines “an extremely simple dialect of SGML which is completely described in the XML Specification. The goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML.” As a result, “XML has been designed for ease of implementation, and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML.” XML is a language that can be used to describe and structure information in a consistent way; it is not a technology, although we normally use technologies that understand XML to write or read documents written in XML. Quotes are from the XML specification. For more information, see the XML FAQ. |