What is XML?

Estimated study time: 10 minutes.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language designed to store and transport data in a format that's both human-readable and machine-readable. Unlike HTML, which describes how content looks, XML describes what the data means.

A Simple Example

<student>
  <name>Ananya Sharma</name>
  <course>Data Analytics</course>
  <enrolled>true</enrolled>
</student>

Why XML Exists

Before XML, exchanging structured data between different systems (written in different languages, running on different platforms) was messy. XML introduced a common, self-describing, text-based format that any system could parse — regardless of the technology stack behind it.

Key Characteristics

• Self-descriptive — tag names describe what the data represents.
• Platform-independent — plain text, so any language or system can read it.
• Hierarchical — data is organized in a nested tree structure.
• Extensible — you define your own tags rather than using a fixed set.

Where XML is Used Today

XML still powers configuration files, RSS feeds, SOAP-based web services, and data interchange in many enterprise and analytics systems, even as JSON has become more popular for web APIs.