XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is define in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards.

XML's design goals emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability over the Internet. It is a textual data format, with strong support via Unicode for the languages of the world. Although XML's design focuses on documents, it is widely used for the representation of arbitrary data structures, for example in web services.

There are many programming interfaces that software developers may use to access XML data, and several schema systems designed to aid in the definition of XML-based languages. As of 2009, hundreds of XML-based languages had been developed, including RSS, Atom, SOAP, and XHTML. XML-based formats have become the default for most office-productivity tools, including Microsoft Office (Office Open XML), OpenOffice.org (Open Document), and Apple's iWork.

XML Declaration

XML documents may begin by declaring some information about themselves, as in the following example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8”?>

XML Example

Here is a small, complete XML document, which uses all of these constructs and concepts.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<painting>
<img src="madonna.jpg" alt='Foligno Madonna, by Raphael'/>
<caption>This is Raphael's "Foligno" Madonna, painted in
<date>1511</date>–<date>1512</date>.
</caption>
</painting>

There are five elements in this example document: painting, img, caption, and two dates. The date elements are children of caption, which is a child of the root element painting. img has two attributes, src and alt.

Demonstration (Our project):

• Globe Pequot Press