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CHARACTERISTICS OF XML

XML stands for ‘Extensible Markup Language’. It is a general-purpose specification which is commonly used for creating custom markup languages. It is an extensible language as it provides its users an ability to define their own elements. Thus it enables users to create custom tags that suit their requirement. XML has been primarily developed to information systems share their structured data online. It can be used to encode documents as well as to serialize data so that it can be efficiently used. Some of the features of XML have been summarized below:
1. XML can be understood as an extensible language which is freely available.
2. XML tags are user made tags. They are not predefined tags. In case of HTML predefined tags are used (like < p >, < h1 > etc.). While using XML users can define custom tags and develop document structure as per their requirement.
3. XML is not a replacement for HTML. It is actually a complement to HTML. Both scripting languages have their own purpose. As web is developing XML is being popularly used to describe and structure the data where as HTML is being be used for formatting and displaying the data.


4. XML has been inherited from SGML


Let us define SGML


SGML:SGML implies Standard Generalized Markup Language. SGML is an ISO standard that defines an extremely powerful markup language. It is popularly used in the publishing industry and large manufacturing companies. It is a meta language used for creating other markup languages such as HTML. It marks the origin of XML.




XML

XML can be understood as markup language like the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) which is commonly used for scripting web page. XML is specifically designed to describe data so that it can be effectively stored online. Web today contains such vast information. XML enables structuring of data so that it can then be mined to get suitable information. In case of XML unlike HTML there are no predefined tags. XML can also be called as self-descriptive markup language as users need to define their on tags.

For better understanding check out the example below:

Suppose you are storing information about a set of books. You may store the information in html as follows:

Book.html

< html >
< head > < title > Storing Information < /title >
< body >
< p > Linear Programming by A.S. Bajaj

< p > Marketing Research by Kotler

< /body >
< /html >

Book.xml

< catalog >
< book >
< title > Linear Programming < title >
< author > A.S Bajaj </author >
< /book >
< book >
< title > <Marketing Research="" <br=""> < author > Kotler < /author > <br /> < /book > <br /> < /catalog > <br /> <br /> In the above example you can see that you can easily define data in an XML file. The file shows that a catalogue of books is being developed which contains title and author detail of the book. You can see that XML the file size in XML is more then the other file size. You may feel that XML will loss in efficiency those results from this increased size. However XML makes this loss by speeding up the processing of a well-defined XML file. The way you interpret an html file is dependent on the pre-defined tags available in html. In contrast XML file tags are user defined and represent a piece of information in a hierarchical manner. Such kind of data which describes is also called metadata. Such data provides great strength to XML as it provides ability for creating own specifications and structure the data in the way you want it to be interpreted by any other system.
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