XML - Extensible Markup Language

Background

  • Extremely commonly used.
  • Graddaddy of them all. Totally abstract.
  • Self-describing, cross platform format for hierarchical data
    • Especially in cross-platform/cross-architecture applications
    • Very good support for different character sets
  • Basis for a lot of “open data”

Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<student>
  <name>
    Pito Salas
  </name>
  <gender>
    male
  </gender>
</student>

Characteristics

  • Precise nesting with and (case sensitive)
  • Attributes embedded in tags go to google

More info

  • Here’s an example of a really big xml file: Voting Data File
  • An excellent viewer and editor for XML is Xmplify
  • Read more about XML tags at XML TUtorial
  • Discussion: When would you use XML? If you didn’t have XML what would you use?