Developer Dictionary
XML
Definition
Extensible Markup Language; a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.
Deep Dive
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. Its primary purpose is to store and transport data, focusing on what the data *is* rather than how it should be displayed (unlike HTML). XML achieves this by allowing users to define their own custom tags to describe the structure and nature of the data, making it highly flexible and extensible for representing diverse information sets, from simple lists to complex hierarchical structures.
Examples & Use Cases
- 1A web service exchanging structured data (e.g., product catalogs, customer orders, or financial transactions) between two different enterprise applications
- 2Configuration files for software applications (e.g., `web.config` in ASP.NET or Maven's `pom.xml`) that define settings and parameters for deployment
- 3RSS feeds, which use XML to syndicate web content like blog posts or news articles in a standardized, machine-readable format for aggregators.
Related Terms
HTMLJSONData SerializationDTD/XML SchemaSOAP