XML
X
XML
Definition
Extensible Markup Language: a markup language for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It is both human-readable and machine-readable, defined by W3C.
XML: Structured Data Standard
XML was developed by the W3C and published in 1998 as a simplified subset of SGML. It allows users to define custom markup languages with strict validation through DTD or XML Schema. XML is foundational in enterprise computing (SOAP, XSLT, XPath), document formats (XHTML, SVG, EPUB, Office Open XML), configuration (Maven, Ant, Spring), and data interchange. While JSON has replaced XML in many web API contexts, XML remains dominant in enterprise integration, publishing, and formats requiring rich document structure.