XML

Hypertext markup Language(HTML) offered a standard format for exchange information with a focus on interactive visual content. However, HTML cannot support all data types. Extensible Markup Language(XML) is an attempt to overcome this shortcoming of HTML. The XML allows to define own markup languages with emphasis on specific tasks.

XML was developed by an XML Working Group formed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium in 1996. The design goal for XML are:

1.	XML shall be straightforwardly suitable over the internet.
2.	XML shall support a wide variety of applications.
3.	XML shall be compatible with SGML.
4.	It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.
5.	The number of optional features in XML is to be kept tot the absolute minimum, ideally zero.
6.	XML documents should be human-legible and reasonable clear.
7.	The XML design should be prepared quickly.
8.	The design of XML shall be formal and concise.
9.	XML documents shall be easy to create.
10.	Terseness in XML markup is minimal importance.

The properties of XML markup make it suitable for representing data, concepts and contexts in an open platform, vendor and language neutral manner. It uses tags to create a hierarchy of related data components called elements. This hierarchy of elements provides context and encapsulation. So there is a greater opportunity to reuse this data outside of the application and data sources from which it was derived.