Overview

Overview

·        XML stands for Extensible Markup language

·        Xml is a markup language that provides an environment to create cross platform compatible text file

·        Cross platform compatibility means it is specific to any operating system, any hardware, any software technologies, any computer architecture

·        Xml is standard given by W3C (World wide web consortium) to create tag based data

·        Xml is a mother language using which we can create other mark up languages like: WML (wireless Markup Language), VML (Vector Markup Language)

·        Xml can be used to store and describe the data. Data means meaningful and understandable information. The data can be stored in a text file, database and xml file

Text file:

  It can contain formatted and unformatted data

·        It doesn’t show any relationships among the data

·        It doesn’t show any hierarchy among the values

·        It may be operating system specific. Ex: note pad is for windows

·        It doesn’t provide any tools check whether the data is valid.

Database:

·        It contains only formatted data in the form of tables

·        The data may be specific to database softwares

·        Database will take the help of SQL for manipulating the data

·        It is used in large scale applications

XML:

1.     It Can Contain Only Formatted Data

2.     It shows the relationships between the data

3.     It shows hierarchy among the values

4.     It is used to create a cross platform text file

5.     Xml provides tools like XML Engine and XML parser to check the correctness of the data

6.     XML does not require any special language for manipulating the data(Ex: sql statements)

7.     XML can be used to store the data for small scale applications(Ex: we can not store the data like databases