1.1.3. XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

The markup language XML will be introduced in the Units XML Introduction and XML Syntax of this lesson. Therefore, we will not go into details of the syntax and the structure of XML now.

Example of an XML File

Example of an XML file

Advantages

As you can see in the example, XML is text based. Humans are therefore able to read the file content.

There are some more advantages of XML:

• XML is platform and software independent
• The elements and attributes are easy to access
• XML is structured and extensible

XML can describe the structure of heterogeneous data.

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of XML are:

• Bigger Filesize
• XML is not suitable for huge amounts of data, since currently no efficient management tools for larger XML files exist
• XML is not suitable for the storage of raster images

Usage Scenario

XML is currently very widespread. Every major software vendor and many open source projects support XML in one or more ways. Since XML is software and platform independent it is suitable for the data exchange between different systems.

Filetransfer with XML