Chapter 13. XML

In a few short years, XML has grown from an obscure specification into the world’s de facto data language. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. Whereas HTML is designed to express appearance, XML is designed to express raw information absent any implied notion about how the data should be rendered. It’s a simple language that is entirely text based, making it particularly well suited to travel over text-based protocols such as HTTP, and that has no predefined tags as HTML does. XML provides the rules. You provide the rest.

XML finds several applications in business and, increasingly, in everyday life. It provides a common data format for companies that want to exchange documents. It’s used by Web services to encode messages ...

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