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Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a
markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...
and
file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...
for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding
document A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" or ...
s in a format that is both
human-readable A human-readable medium or human-readable format is any encoding of data or information that can be naturally read by humans. In computing, ''human-readable'' data is often encoded as ASCII or Unicode text, rather than as binary data. In most c ...
and machine-readable. The
World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
's XML 1.0 Specification of 1998 and several other related specifications—all of them free
open standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a prerequisite to use open license, non-discrimination and extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in the development. There is no single definition ...
s—define XML. The design goals of XML emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability across the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
. It is a textual data format with strong support via
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
for different
human languages Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
. Although the design of XML focuses on documents, the language is widely used for the representation of arbitrary
data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...
s such as those used in web services. Several schema systems exist to aid in the definition of XML-based languages, while programmers have developed many
application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...
s (APIs) to aid the processing of XML data.


Overview

The main purpose of XML is
serialization In computing, serialization (or serialisation) is the process of translating a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored (e.g. files in secondary storage devices, data buffers in primary storage devices) or transmitted (e ...
, i.e. storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. For two disparate systems to exchange information, they need to agree upon a file format. XML standardizes this process. XML is analogous to a
lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
for representing information. As a
markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...
, XML labels, categorizes, and structurally organizes information. XML tags represent the data structure and contain metadata. What's within the tags is data, encoded in the way the XML standard specifies. An additional
XML schema An XML schema is a description of a type of Extensible Markup Language, XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed ...
(XSD) defines the necessary metadata for interpreting and validating XML. (This is also referred to as the canonical schema.) An XML document that adheres to basic XML rules is "well-formed"; one that adheres to its schema is "valid."
IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...
RFC 7303 (which supersedes the older RFC 3023), provides rules for the construction of media types for use in XML message. It defines three media types: application/xml (text/xml is an alias), application/xml-external-parsed-entity (text/xml-external-parsed-entity is an alias) and application/xml-dtd. They are used for transmitting raw XML files without exposing their internal
semantics Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...
. RFC 7303 further recommends that XML-based languages be given media types ending in +xml, for example, image/svg+xml for SVG. Further guidelines for the use of XML in a networked context appear in RFC 3470, also known as IETF BCP 70, a document covering many aspects of designing and deploying an XML-based language.


Applications

XML has come into common use for the interchange of data over the Internet. Hundreds of document formats using XML syntax have been developed, including
RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...
,
Atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...
,
Office Open XML Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version a ...
,
OpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, is an open file format for word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and graphics and using ZIP-compressed XML files. It was developed wi ...
, SVG, and
XHTML Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages. It mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated. While HTML, prior ...
. XML also provides the base language for
communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics (computer scien ...
s such as
SOAP Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...
and
XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), it ...
. It is the message exchange format for the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) programming technique. Many industry data standards, such as
Health Level 7 Health Level Seven or HL7 refers to a set of international standards for transfer of clinical and administrative data between software applications used by various healthcare providers. These standards focus on the application layer, which is "la ...
,
OpenTravel Alliance The OpenTravel Alliance is a not-for-profit trade association founded in 1999. History OpenTravel was founded in 1999 by a consortium of travel companies - including air, hotel, car rental, and supporting software companies - with a primary foc ...
,
FpML FpML (Financial products Markup Language) is a business information exchange standard based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) that enables business-to-business over-the-counter (OTC) financial derivative transactions online by following W3C stand ...
,
MISMO The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) is a not-for-profit, wholly owned subsidiary of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) responsible for developing standards for exchanging information and conducting business in the U. ...
, and
National Information Exchange Model NIEM ( ) originated as an XML-based information exchange framework from the United States. NIEM also supports NIEM JSON exchanges. NIEM is currently developinthe NIEM Metamodel and Common Model Formatwhich can be expressed in any data serializatio ...
are based on XML and the rich features of the XML schema specification. In publishing,
Darwin Information Typing Architecture The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) specification defines a set of document types for authoring and organizing topic-oriented information, as well as a set of mechanisms for combining, extending, and constraining document types. It i ...
is an XML industry data standard. XML is used extensively to underpin various publishing formats.


Key terminology

The material in this section is based on the XML Specification. This is not an exhaustive list of all the constructs that appear in XML; it provides an introduction to the key constructs most often encountered in day-to-day use. ;: An XML document is a string of ''characters''. Every legal
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
character (except Null) may appear in an (1.1) XML document (while some are discouraged). ;: The ''processor'' analyzes the markup and passes structured information to an ''application''. The specification places requirements on what an XML processor must do and not do, but the application is outside its scope. The processor (as the specification calls it) is often referred to colloquially as an ''XML parser''. ;: The characters making up an XML document are divided into ''markup'' and ''content'', which may be distinguished by the application of simple syntactic rules. Generally, strings that constitute markup either begin with the character < and end with a >, or they begin with the character & and end with a ;. Strings of characters that are not markup are content. However, in a
CDATA The term CDATA, meaning character data, is used for distinct, but related, purposes in the markup languages SGML and XML. The term indicates that a certain portion of the document is general ''character data'', rather than non-character data or c ...
section, the delimiters <! DATA[ and > are classified as markup, while the text between them is classified as content. In addition, whitespace before and after the outermost element is classified as markup. ;: A ''tag'' is a markup construct that begins with < and ends with >. There are three types of tag: :* ''start-tag'', such as <section>; :* ''end-tag'', such as </section>; :* ''empty-element tag'', such as <line-break />. ;: An ''element'' is a logical document component that either begins with a start-tag and ends with a matching end-tag or consists only of an empty-element tag. The characters between the start-tag and end-tag, if any, are the element's ''content'', and may contain markup, including other elements, which are called ''child elements''. An example is <greeting>Hello, world!</greeting>. Another is <line-break />. ;: An ''attribute'' is a markup construct consisting of a name–value pair that exists within a start-tag or empty-element tag. An example is <img src="madonna.jpg" alt="Madonna" />, where the names of the attributes are "src" and "alt", and their values are "madonna.jpg" and "Madonna" respectively. Another example is <step number="3">Connect A to B.</step>, where the name of the attribute is "number" and its value is "3". An XML attribute can only have a single value and each attribute can appear at most once on each element. In the common situation where a list of multiple values is desired, this must be done by encoding the list into a well-formed XML attribute with some format beyond what XML defines itself. Usually this is either a comma or semi-colon delimited list or, if the individual values are known not to contain spaces, a space-delimited list can be used. <div class="inner greeting-box">Welcome!</div>, where the attribute "class" has both the value "inner greeting-box" and also indicates the two
CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
class names "inner" and "greeting-box". ;: XML documents may begin with an ''XML declaration'' that describes some information about themselves. An example is <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>.


Characters and escaping

XML documents consist entirely of characters from the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
repertoire. Except for a small number of specifically excluded
control characters In computing and telecommunication, a control character or non-printing character (NPC) is a code point (a number) in a character set, that does not represent a written symbol. They are used as in-band signaling to cause effects other than the ...
, any character defined by Unicode may appear within the content of an XML document. XML includes facilities for identifying the ''encoding'' of the Unicode characters that make up the document, and for expressing characters that, for one reason or another, cannot be used directly.


Valid characters

Unicode code points in the following ranges are valid in XML 1.0 documents: * U+0009 (Horizontal Tab), U+000A (Line Feed), U+000D (Carriage Return): these are the only C0 controls accepted in XML 1.0; * U+0020–U+D7FF, U+E000–U+FFFD: this excludes some non-characters in the BMP (all surrogates, U+FFFE and U+FFFF are forbidden); * U+10000–U+10FFFF: this includes all code points in supplementary planes, including non-characters. XML 1.1 extends the set of allowed characters to include all the above, plus the remaining characters in the range U+0001–U+001F. At the same time, however, it restricts the use of C0 and C1 control characters other than U+0009 (Horizontal Tab), U+000A (Line Feed), U+000D (Carriage Return), and U+0085 (Next Line) by requiring them to be written in escaped form (for example U+0001 must be written as &#x01; or its equivalent). In the case of C1 characters, this restriction is a backwards incompatibility; it was introduced to allow common encoding errors to be detected. The code point U+0000 (Null) is the only character that is not permitted in any XML 1.1 document.


Encoding detection

The Unicode character set can be encoded into bytes for storage or transmission in a variety of different ways, called "encodings". Unicode itself defines encodings that cover the entire repertoire; well-known ones include
UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-width encoding, variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit'' ...
(which the XML standard recommends using, without a BOM) and
UTF-16 UTF-16 (16-bit computing, 16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding capable of encoding all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode (in fact this number of code points is dictated by the design of UTF-16). The encoding is variab ...
. There are many other text encodings that predate Unicode, such as
ASCII ASCII ( ), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices. Because of ...
and various
ISO/IEC 8859 ISO/IEC 8859 is a joint ISO and IEC series of standards for 8-bit character encodings. The series of standards consists of numbered parts, such as ISO/IEC 8859-1, ISO/IEC 8859-2, etc. There are 15 parts, excluding the abandoned ISO/IEC 8859-12. ...
; their character repertoires are in every case subsets of the Unicode character set. XML allows the use of any of the Unicode-defined encodings and any other encodings whose characters also appear in Unicode. XML also provides a mechanism whereby an XML processor can reliably, without any prior knowledge, determine which encoding is being used. Encodings other than UTF-8 and UTF-16 are not necessarily recognized by every XML parser (and in some cases not even UTF-16, even though the standard mandates it to also be recognized).


Escaping

XML provides ''
escape Escape or Escaping may refer to: Computing * Escape character, in computing and telecommunication, a character which signifies that what follows takes an alternative interpretation ** Escape sequence, a series of characters used to trigger some so ...
'' facilities for including characters that are problematic to include directly. For example: * The characters "<" and "&" are key syntax markers and may never appear in content outside a
CDATA The term CDATA, meaning character data, is used for distinct, but related, purposes in the markup languages SGML and XML. The term indicates that a certain portion of the document is general ''character data'', rather than non-character data or c ...
section. It is allowed, but not recommended, to use "<" in XML entity values. * Some character encodings support only a subset of Unicode. For example, it is legal to encode an XML document in ASCII, but ASCII lacks code points for Unicode characters such as "é". * It might not be possible to type the character on the author's machine. * Some characters have
glyphs A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
that cannot be visually distinguished from other characters, such as the
non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space, , also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space (though it is not of fixed width), is a space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In s ...
(&#xa0;) " " and the
space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...
(&#x20;) " ", and the Cyrillic capital letter A (&#x410;) "А" and the Latin capital letter A (&#x41;) "A". There are five predefined entities: * &lt; represents "<"; * &gt; represents ">"; * &amp; represents "&"; * &apos; represents ""; * &quot; represents ''. All permitted Unicode characters may be represented with a ''
numeric character reference A numeric character reference (NCR) is a common markup construct used in SGML and SGML-derived markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represents a single character. Since WebSgml, XML ...
''. Consider the Chinese character "中", whose numeric code in Unicode is hexadecimal 4E2D, or decimal 20,013. A user whose keyboard offers no method for entering this character could still insert it in an XML document encoded either as &#20013; or &#x4e2d;. Similarly, the string "I <3 Jörg" could be encoded for inclusion in an XML document as I &lt;3 J&#xF6;rg. &#0; is not permitted because the
null character The null character (also null terminator) is a control character with the value zero. It is present in many character sets, including those defined by the Baudot and ITA2 codes, ISO/IEC 646 (or ASCII), the C0 control code, the Universal Coded Ch ...
is one of the control characters excluded from XML, even when using a numeric character reference. An alternative encoding mechanism such as
Base64 In computer programming, Base64 is a group of binary-to-text encoding schemes that represent binary data (more specifically, a sequence of 8-bit bytes) in sequences of 24 bits that can be represented by four 6-bit Base64 digits. Common to all bina ...
is needed to represent such characters.


Comments

Comments may appear anywhere in a document outside other markup. Comments cannot appear before the XML declaration. Comments begin with <!-- and end with -->. For compatibility with
SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on two postulates": * Declarative: Markup should des ...
, the string "--" (double-hyphen) is not allowed inside comments; this means comments cannot be nested. The ampersand has no special significance within comments, so entity and character references are not recognized as such, and there is no way to represent characters outside the character set of the document encoding. An example of a valid comment: <!--no need to escape <code> & such in comments-->


International use

XML 1.0 (Fifth Edition) and XML 1.1 support the direct use of almost any
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
character in element names, attributes, comments, character data, and processing instructions (other than the ones that have special symbolic meaning in XML itself, such as the less-than sign, "<"). The following is a well-formed XML document including
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
,
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
and
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
characters: <俄语 լեզու="ռուսերեն">данные


Syntactical correctness and error-handling

The XML specification defines an XML document as a well-formed text, meaning that it satisfies a list of syntax rules provided in the specification. Some key points in the fairly lengthy list include: * The document contains only properly encoded legal Unicode characters. * None of the special syntax characters such as < and & appear except when performing their markup-delineation roles. * The start-tag, end-tag, and empty-element tag that delimit elements are correctly nested, with none missing and none overlapping. * Tag names are case-sensitive; the start-tag and end-tag must match exactly. * Tag names cannot contain any of the characters !"#$%&'()*+,/;<=>?@ `~, nor a space character, and cannot begin with "-", ".", or a numeric digit. * A single root element contains all the other elements. The definition of an XML document excludes texts that contain violations of well-formedness rules; they are simply not XML. An XML processor that encounters such a violation is required to report such errors and to cease normal processing. This policy, occasionally referred to as "
draconian Draconian is an adjective meaning "of great severity", that derives from Draco, an Athenian law scribe under whom small offenses had heavy punishments ( Draconian laws). Draconian may also refer to: * Draconian (band), a death/doom metal band fro ...
error handling," stands in notable contrast to the behavior of programs that process
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
, which are designed to produce a reasonable result even in the presence of severe markup errors. XML's policy in this area has been criticized as a violation of
Postel's law In computing, the robustness principle is a design guideline for software that states: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others". It is often reworded as: "be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you a ...
("Be conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept"). The XML specification defines a valid XML document as a
well-formed XML document A well-formed document in XML is a document that "adheres to the syntax rules specified by the XML 1.0 specification in that it must satisfy both physical and logical structures". Requirements At its base level well-formed documents require that: ...
which also conforms to the rules of a
Document Type Definition A document type definition (DTD) is a set of ''markup declarations'' that define a ''document type'' for an SGML-family markup language ( GML, SGML, XML, HTML). A DTD defines the valid building blocks of an XML document. It defines the document ...
(DTD).


Schemas and validation

In addition to being well-formed, an XML document may be ''valid''. This means that it contains a reference to a
Document Type Definition A document type definition (DTD) is a set of ''markup declarations'' that define a ''document type'' for an SGML-family markup language ( GML, SGML, XML, HTML). A DTD defines the valid building blocks of an XML document. It defines the document ...
(DTD), and that its elements and attributes are declared in that DTD and follow the grammatical rules for them that the DTD specifies. XML processors are classified as ''validating'' or ''non-validating'' depending on whether or not they check XML documents for validity. A processor that discovers a validity error must be able to report it, but may continue normal processing. A DTD is an example of a ''
schema The word schema comes from the Greek word ('), which means ''shape'', or more generally, ''plan''. The plural is ('). In English, both ''schemas'' and ''schemata'' are used as plural forms. Schema may refer to: Science and technology * SCHEMA ...
'' or ''grammar''. Since the initial publication of XML 1.0, there has been substantial work in the area of schema languages for XML. Such schema languages typically constrain the set of elements that may be used in a document, which attributes may be applied to them, the order in which they may appear, and the allowable parent/child relationships.


Document type definition

The oldest schema language for XML is the
document type definition A document type definition (DTD) is a set of ''markup declarations'' that define a ''document type'' for an SGML-family markup language ( GML, SGML, XML, HTML). A DTD defines the valid building blocks of an XML document. It defines the document ...
(DTD), inherited from SGML. DTDs have the following benefits: * DTD support is ubiquitous due to its inclusion in the XML 1.0 standard. * DTDs are terse compared to element-based schema languages and consequently present more information in a single screen. * DTDs allow the declaration of standard public entity sets for publishing characters. * DTDs define a ''document type'' rather than the types used by a namespace, thus grouping all constraints for a document in a single collection. DTDs have the following limitations: * They have no explicit support for newer
features Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature (CAD), could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (software design) is an intentional distinguishing characteristic of a software item ...
of XML, most importantly
namespaces In computing, a namespace is a set of signs (''names'') that are used to identify and refer to objects of various kinds. A namespace ensures that all of a given set of objects have unique names so that they can be easily identified. Namespaces ...
. * They lack expressiveness. XML DTDs are simpler than SGML DTDs and there are certain structures that cannot be expressed with regular grammars. DTDs only support rudimentary datatypes. * They lack readability. DTD designers typically make heavy use of parameter entities (which behave essentially as textual macros), which make it easier to define complex grammars, but at the expense of clarity. * They use a syntax based on
regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" or ...
syntax, inherited from SGML, to describe the schema. Typical XML APIs such as SAX do not attempt to offer applications a structured representation of the syntax, so it is less accessible to programmers than an element-based syntax may be. Two peculiar features that distinguish DTDs from other schema types are the syntactic support for embedding a DTD within XML documents and for defining ''entities'', which are arbitrary fragments of text or markup that the XML processor inserts in the DTD itself and in the XML document wherever they are referenced, like character escapes. DTD technology is still used in many applications because of its ubiquity.


Schema

A newer schema language, described by the W3C as the successor of DTDs, is
XML Schema An XML schema is a description of a type of Extensible Markup Language, XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed ...
, often referred to by the
initialism An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
for XML Schema instances, XSD (XML Schema Definition). XSDs are far more powerful than DTDs in describing XML languages. They use a rich datatyping system and allow for more detailed constraints on an XML document's logical structure. XSDs also use an XML-based format, which makes it possible to use ordinary XML tools to help process them. xs:schema element that defines a schema:


RELAX NG

RELAX NG In computing, RELAX NG (REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation) is a schema language for XML—a RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. A RELAX NG schema is itself an XML document but RELAX NG also ...
(Regular Language for XML Next Generation) was initially specified by
OASIS In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...
and is now a standard (Part 2: ''Regular-grammar-based validation'' of ISO/IEC 19757 – DSDL). RELAX NG schemas may be written in either an XML based syntax or a more compact non-XML syntax; the two syntaxes are
isomorphic In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word is ...
and James Clark's conversion tool
Trang
can convert between them without loss of information. RELAX NG has a simpler definition and validation framework than XML Schema, making it easier to use and implement. It also has the ability to use
datatype In computer science and computer programming, a data type (or simply type) is a set of possible values and a set of allowed operations on it. A data type tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Most progra ...
framework plug-ins; a RELAX NG schema author, for example, can require values in an XML document to conform to definitions in XML Schema Datatypes.


Schematron

Schematron Schematron is a rule-based validation language for making assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in XML trees. It is a structural schema language expressed in XML using a small number of elements and XPath. In many implementations ...
is a language for making assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in an XML document. It typically uses
XPath XPath (XML Path Language) is an expression language designed to support the query or transformation of XML documents. It was defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and can be used to compute values (e.g., strings, numbers, or Boolean v ...
expressions. Schematron is now a standard (Part 3: ''Rule-based validation'' of ISO/IEC 19757 – DSDL).


DSDL and other schema languages

DSDL Document Schema Definition Languages (DSDL) is a framework within which multiple validation tasks of different types can be applied to an XML document in order to achieve more complete validation results than just the application of a single techn ...
(Document Schema Definition Languages) is a multi-part ISO/IEC standard (ISO/IEC 19757) that brings together a comprehensive set of small schema languages, each targeted at specific problems. DSDL includes
RELAX NG In computing, RELAX NG (REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation) is a schema language for XML—a RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. A RELAX NG schema is itself an XML document but RELAX NG also ...
full and compact syntax,
Schematron Schematron is a rule-based validation language for making assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in XML trees. It is a structural schema language expressed in XML using a small number of elements and XPath. In many implementations ...
assertion language, and languages for defining datatypes, character repertoire constraints, renaming and entity expansion, and namespace-based
routing Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched telephone netw ...
of document fragments to different validators. DSDL schema languages do not have the vendor support of XML Schemas yet, and are to some extent a grassroots reaction of industrial publishers to the lack of utility of XML Schemas for
publishing Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
. Some schema languages not only describe the structure of a particular XML format but also offer limited facilities to influence processing of individual XML files that conform to this format. DTDs and XSDs both have this ability; they can for instance provide the
infoset XML Information Set (XML Infoset) is a W3C specification describing an abstract data model of an XML document in terms of a set of ''information items''. The definitions in the XML Information Set specification are meant to be used in ''other'' sp ...
augmentation facility and attribute defaults. RELAX NG and Schematron intentionally do not provide these.


Related specifications

A cluster of specifications closely related to XML have been developed, starting soon after the initial publication of XML 1.0. It is frequently the case that the term "XML" is used to refer to XML together with one or more of these other technologies that have come to be seen as part of the XML core. *
XML namespace XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary. If each vocabulary ...
s enable the same document to contain XML elements and attributes taken from different vocabularies, without any
naming collision A naming collision is a circumstance where two or more identifiers in a given namespace or a given scope cannot be unambiguously resolved, and such unambiguous resolution is a requirement of the underlying system. Example: XML element names In ...
s occurring. Although XML Namespaces are not part of the XML specification itself, virtually all XML software also supports XML Namespaces. *
XML Base XML Base is a World Wide Web Consortium recommended facility for defining base URIs, for resolving relative URIs, in parts of XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstruc ...
defines the xml:base attribute, which may be used to set the base for resolution of relative URI references within the scope of a single XML element. *
XML Information Set XML Information Set (XML Infoset) is a W3C specification describing an abstract data model of an XML document in terms of a set of ''information items''. The definitions in the XML Information Set specification are meant to be used in ''other'' sp ...
or XML Infoset is an abstract data model for XML documents in terms of ''information items''. The infoset is commonly used in the specifications of XML languages, for convenience in describing constraints on the XML constructs those languages allow. *
XSL In computing, the term Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is used to refer to a family of languages used to transform and render XML documents. Historically, the W3C XSL Working Group produced a draft specification under the name "XSL," which ...
(Extensible Stylesheet Language) is a family of languages used to transform and render XML documents, split into three parts: *
XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subseque ...
(XSL Transformations), an XML language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents or other formats such as HTML, plain text, or XSL-FO. XSLT is very tightly coupled with XPath, which it uses to address components of the input XML document, mainly elements and attributes. *
XSL-FO XSL-FO (XSL Formatting Objects) is a markup language for XML document formatting that is most often used to generate PDF files. XSL-FO is part of XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language), a set of W3C technologies designed for the transformation and ...
(XSL Formatting Objects), an XML language for rendering XML documents, often used to generate PDFs. *
XPath XPath (XML Path Language) is an expression language designed to support the query or transformation of XML documents. It was defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and can be used to compute values (e.g., strings, numbers, or Boolean v ...
(XML Path Language), a non-XML language for addressing the components (elements, attributes, and so on) of an XML document. XPath is widely used in other core-XML specifications and in programming libraries for accessing XML-encoded data. *
XQuery XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, bin ...
(XML Query) is an XML query language strongly rooted in XPath and XML Schema. It provides methods to access, manipulate and return XML, and is mainly conceived as a query language for
XML database An XML database is a data persistence software system that allows data to be specified, and sometimes stored, in XML format. This data can be queried, transformed, exported and returned to a calling system. XML databases are a flavor of document- ...
s. *
XML Signature XML Signature (also called ''XMLDSig'', ''XML-DSig'', ''XML-Sig'') defines an XML syntax for digital signatures and is defined in the W3C recommendationbr>XML Signature Syntax and Processing Functionally, it has much in common with PKCS #7 but is ...
defines syntax and processing rules for creating
digital signature A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...
s on XML content. *
XML Encryption XML Encryption, also known as XML-Enc, is a specification, governed by a W3C recommendation, that defines how to encrypt the contents of an XML element. Although XML Encryption can be used to encrypt any kind of data, it is nonetheless known as "XM ...
defines syntax and processing rules for
encrypting In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...
XML content. * XML model (Part 11: ''Schema Association'' of ISO/IEC 19757 – DSDL) defines a means of associating any xml document with any of the schema types mentioned above. Some other specifications conceived as part of the "XML Core" have failed to find wide adoption, including
XInclude XInclude is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents, by writing inclusion tags in the "main" document to automatically include other documents or parts thereof. The resulting document becomes a single composite XML Information Set. The XInclud ...
,
XLink XML Linking Language, or XLink, is an XML markup language and W3C specification that provides methods for creating internal and external links within XML documents, and associating metadata with those links. The XLink specification XLink 1.1 is a ...
, and
XPointer XPointer is a system for addressing components of XML-based Internet media. It is divided among four specifications: a "framework" that forms the basis for identifying XML fragments, a positional element addressing scheme, a scheme for namespaces, ...
.


Programming interfaces

The design goals of XML include, "It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents." Despite this, the XML specification contains almost no information about how programmers might go about doing such processing. The
XML Infoset XML Information Set (XML Infoset) is a W3C specification describing an abstract data model of an XML document in terms of a set of ''information items''. The definitions in the XML Information Set specification are meant to be used in ''other'' sp ...
specification provides a vocabulary to refer to the constructs within an XML document, but does not provide any guidance on how to access this information. A variety of
API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
s for accessing XML have been developed and used, and some have been standardized. Existing APIs for XML processing tend to fall into these categories: * Stream-oriented APIs accessible from a programming language, for example SAX and
StAX Streaming API for XML (StAX) is an application programming interface (API) to read and write XML documents, originating from the Java programming language community. Traditionally, XML APIs are either: * DOM based - the entire document is read in ...
. * Tree-traversal APIs accessible from a programming language, for example
DOM Dom or DOM may refer to: People and fictional characters * Dom (given name), including fictional characters * Dom (surname) * Dom La Nena (born 1989), stage name of Brazilian-born cellist, singer and songwriter Dominique Pinto * Dom people, an et ...
. *
XML data binding XML data binding refers to a means of representing information in an XML document as a business object in computer memory. This allows applications to access the data in the XML from the object rather than using the DOM or SAX to retrieve the data ...
, which provides an automated translation between an XML document and programming-language objects. * Declarative transformation languages such as
XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subseque ...
and
XQuery XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, bin ...
. * Syntax extensions to general-purpose programming languages, for example
LINQ Language Integrated Query (LINQ, pronounced "link") is a Microsoft .NET Framework component that adds native data querying capabilities to .NET languages, originally released as a major part of .NET Framework 3.5 in 2007. LINQ extends the langua ...
and Scala. Stream-oriented facilities require less memory and, for certain tasks based on a linear traversal of an XML document, are faster and simpler than other alternatives. Tree-traversal and data-binding APIs typically require the use of much more memory, but are often found more convenient for use by programmers; some include declarative retrieval of document components via the use of XPath expressions. XSLT is designed for declarative description of XML document transformations, and has been widely implemented both in server-side packages and Web browsers. XQuery overlaps XSLT in its functionality, but is designed more for searching of large
XML database An XML database is a data persistence software system that allows data to be specified, and sometimes stored, in XML format. This data can be queried, transformed, exported and returned to a calling system. XML databases are a flavor of document- ...
s.


Simple API for XML

Simple API for XML SAX (Simple API for XML) is an event-driven online algorithm for parsing XML documents, with an API developed by the XML-DEV mailing list. SAX provides a mechanism for reading data from an XML document that is an alternative to that provided by ...
(SAX) is a
lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lexical ...
,
event-driven Event driven may refer to: The term event-driven refers to a methodology that focuses on events and event dependencies. Examples include * Event-driven finite-state machine, finite-state machine where the transition from one state to another i ...
API in which a document is read serially and its contents are reported as callbacks to various
methods Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to: *Scien ...
on a handler object of the user's design. SAX is fast and efficient to implement, but difficult to use for extracting information at random from the XML, since it tends to burden the application author with keeping track of what part of the document is being processed. It is better suited to situations in which certain types of information are always handled the same way, no matter where they occur in the document.


Pull parsing

Pull parsing treats the document as a series of items read in sequence using the iterator design pattern. This allows for writing of
recursive descent parser In computer science, a recursive descent parser is a kind of top-down parser built from a set of mutually recursive procedures (or a non-recursive equivalent) where each such procedure implements one of the nonterminals of the grammar. Thus th ...
s in which the structure of the code performing the parsing mirrors the structure of the XML being parsed, and intermediate parsed results can be used and accessed as local variables within the functions performing the parsing, or passed down (as function parameters) into lower-level functions, or returned (as function return values) to higher-level functions. Examples of pull parsers include Data::Edit::Xml in
Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...
,
StAX Streaming API for XML (StAX) is an application programming interface (API) to read and write XML documents, originating from the Java programming language community. Traditionally, XML APIs are either: * DOM based - the entire document is read in ...
in the
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
programming language, XMLPullParser in
Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by Alan Ka ...
, XMLReader in
PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...
, ElementTree.iterparse in
Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...
, System.Xml.XmlReader in the
.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...
, and the DOM traversal API (NodeIterator and TreeWalker). A pull parser creates an iterator that sequentially visits the various elements, attributes, and data in an XML document. Code that uses this iterator can test the current item (to tell, for example, whether it is a start-tag or end-tag, or text), and inspect its attributes (local name,
namespace In computing, a namespace is a set of signs (''names'') that are used to identify and refer to objects of various kinds. A namespace ensures that all of a given set of objects have unique names so that they can be easily identified. Namespaces ...
, values of XML attributes, value of text, etc.), and can also move the iterator to the next item. The code can thus extract information from the document as it traverses it. The recursive-descent approach tends to lend itself to keeping data as typed local variables in the code doing the parsing, while SAX, for instance, typically requires a parser to manually maintain intermediate data within a stack of elements that are parent elements of the element being parsed. Pull-parsing code can be more straightforward to understand and maintain than SAX parsing code.


Document Object Model

Document Object Model The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an XML or HTML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document wi ...
(DOM) is an API that allows for navigation of the entire document as if it were a tree of
node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics *Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines, ...
objects Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...
representing the document's contents. A DOM document can be created by a parser, or can be generated manually by users (with limitations). Data types in DOM nodes are abstract; implementations provide their own programming language-specific bindings. DOM implementations tend to be
memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...
intensive, as they generally require the entire document to be loaded into memory and constructed as a tree of objects before access is allowed.


Data binding

XML data binding XML data binding refers to a means of representing information in an XML document as a business object in computer memory. This allows applications to access the data in the XML from the object rather than using the DOM or SAX to retrieve the data ...
is the binding of XML documents to a hierarchy of custom and strongly typed objects, in contrast to the generic objects created by a DOM parser. This approach simplifies code development, and in many cases allows problems to be identified at compile time rather than run-time. It is suitable for applications where the document structure is known and fixed at the time the application is written. Example data binding systems include the
Java Architecture for XML Binding Java XML Binding (JAXB; formerly Java Architecture for XML Binding) is a software framework that allows Java EE developers to map Java classes to XML representations. JAXB provides two main features: the ability to ''marshal'' Java objects into ...
(JAXB), XML Serialization in
.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...
. and XML serialization in
gSOAP gSOAP is a C and C++ software development toolkit for SOAP/XML web services and generic XML data bindings. Given a set of C/C++ type declarations, the compiler-based gSOAP tools generate serialization routines in source code for efficient XML s ...
.


XML as data type

XML has appeared as a
first-class data type In programming language design, a first-class citizen (also type, object, entity, or value) in a given programming language is an entity which supports all the operations generally available to other entities. These operations typically include ...
in other languages. The
ECMAScript for XML ECMAScript for XML (E4X) is the standarprogramming language extension that adds native XML support to ECMAScript (which includes ActionScript, JavaScript, and JScript). The goal is to provide an alternative to DOM interfaces that uses a simpler synt ...
(E4X) extension to the
ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262 ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scripting o ...
/JavaScript language explicitly defines two specific objects (XML and XMLList) for JavaScript, which support XML document nodes and XML node lists as distinct objects and use a dot-notation specifying parent-child relationships. E4X is supported by the
Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...
2.5+ browsers (though now deprecated) and Adobe
Actionscript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (meaning i ...
, but has not been adopted more universally. Similar notations are used in Microsoft's
LINQ Language Integrated Query (LINQ, pronounced "link") is a Microsoft .NET Framework component that adds native data querying capabilities to .NET languages, originally released as a major part of .NET Framework 3.5 in 2007. LINQ extends the langua ...
implementation for Microsoft .NET 3.5 and above, and in Scala (which uses the Java VM). The open-source xmlsh application, which provides a Linux-like shell with special features for XML manipulation, similarly treats XML as a data type, using the < notation. The
Resource Description Framework The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard originally designed as a data model for metadata. It has come to be used as a general method for description and exchange of graph data. RDF provides a variety of ...
defines a data type rdf:XMLLiteral to hold wrapped,
canonical XML Canonical XML is a normal form of XML, intended to allow relatively simple comparison of pairs of XML documents for equivalence; for this purpose, the Canonical XML transformation removes non-meaningful differences between the documents. Any XML do ...
. Facebook has produced extensions to the
PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...
and
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
languages that add XML to the core syntax in a similar fashion to E4X, namely XHP and JSX respectively.


History

XML is an application
profile Profile or profiles may refer to: Art, entertainment and media Music * ''Profile'' (Jan Akkerman album), 1973 * ''Profile'' (Githead album), 2005 * ''Profile'' (Pat Donohue album), 2005 * ''Profile'' (Duke Pearson album), 1959 * '' ''Profi ...
of SGML (ISO 8879). The versatility of SGML for dynamic information display was understood by early digital media publishers in the late 1980s prior to the rise of the Internet. By the mid-1990s some practitioners of SGML had gained experience with the then-new
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...
, and believed that SGML offered solutions to some of the problems the Web was likely to face as it grew. Dan Connolly added SGML to the list of W3C's activities when he joined the staff in 1995; work began in mid-1996 when
Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...
engineer
Jon Bosak Jon Bosak led the creation of the XML specification at the W3C. From 1996–2008, he worked for Sun Microsystems. XML Tim Bray, who was one of the editors of the XML specification, has this to say in his note on Bosak in his annotated version o ...
developed a charter and recruited collaborators. Bosak was well connected in the small community of people who had experience both in SGML and the Web. XML was compiled by a
working group A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...
of eleven members, supported by a (roughly) 150-member Interest Group. Technical debate took place on the Interest Group mailing list and issues were resolved by consensus or, when that failed, majority vote of the Working Group. A record of design decisions and their rationales was compiled by
Michael Sperberg-McQueen C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen is an American markup language specialist. He was co-editor of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 spec (1998), and chair of the XML Schema working group. He was also instrumental in the Text Encoding Initiative ...
on December 4, 1997. James Clark served as Technical Lead of the Working Group, notably contributing the empty-element <empty /> syntax and the name "XML". Other names that had been put forward for consideration included "MAGMA" (Minimal Architecture for Generalized Markup Applications), "SLIM" (Structured Language for Internet Markup) and "MGML" (Minimal Generalized Markup Language). The co-editors of the specification were originally
Tim Bray Timothy William Bray (born June 21, 1955) is a Canadian software developer, environmentalist, political activist and one of the co-authors of the original XML specification. He worked for Amazon Web Services from December 2014 until May 2020 whe ...
and
Michael Sperberg-McQueen C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen is an American markup language specialist. He was co-editor of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 spec (1998), and chair of the XML Schema working group. He was also instrumental in the Text Encoding Initiative ...
. Halfway through the project Bray accepted a consulting engagement with
Netscape Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
, provoking vociferous protests from Microsoft. Bray was temporarily asked to resign the editorship. This led to intense dispute in the Working Group, eventually solved by the appointment of Microsoft's
Jean Paoli Jean Paoli is one of the inventors of XML. Along with Tim Bray and C. Michael Sperberg-McQueen, Paoli co-edited the XML 1.0 recommendation for the World Wide Web Consortium starting in 1997 and until at least 2008. Paoli was born in Beirut, Leban ...
as a third co-editor. The XML Working Group never met face-to-face; the design was accomplished using a combination of email and weekly teleconferences. The major design decisions were reached in a short burst of intense work between August and November 1996, when the first Working Draft of an XML specification was published. Further design work continued through 1997, and XML 1.0 became a
W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
Recommendation on February 10, 1998.


Sources

XML is a profile of an ISO standard SGML, and most of XML comes from SGML unchanged. From SGML comes the separation of logical and physical structures (elements and entities), the availability of grammar-based validation (DTDs), the separation of data and metadata (elements and attributes), mixed content, the separation of processing from representation (
processing instruction A Processing Instruction (PI) is an SGML and XML node type, which may occur anywhere in the document, intended to carry instructions to the application. Processing instructions are exposed in the Document Object Model as Node.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION ...
s), and the default angle-bracket syntax. The SGML declaration was removed; thus XML has a fixed delimiter set and adopts
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
as the document
character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using digital computers. The numerical values that ...
. Other sources of technology for XML were the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative), which defined a profile of SGML for use as a "transfer syntax"; and
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
, in which elements were synchronous with their resource, document character sets were separate from resource encoding, the xml:lang attribute was invented, and (like
HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
) metadata accompanied the resource rather than being needed at the declaration of a link. The ERCS(Extended Reference Concrete Syntax) project of the SPREAD (Standardization Project Regarding East Asian Documents) project of the ISO-related China/Japan/Korea Document Processing expert group was the basis of XML 1.0's naming rules; SPREAD also introduced hexadecimal numeric character references and the concept of references to make available all Unicode characters. To support ERCS, XML and HTML better, the SGML standard IS 8879 was revised in 1996 and 1998 with WebSGML Adaptations. The XML header followed that of ISO
HyTime HyTime (''Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language'') is a markup language that is an application of SGML. HyTime defines a set of hypertext-oriented element types that, in effect, supplement SGML and allow SGML document authors to build hyperte ...
. Ideas that developed during discussion that are novel in XML included the algorithm for encoding detection and the encoding header, the processing instruction target, the xml:space attribute, and the new close delimiter for empty-element tags. The notion of well-formedness as opposed to validity (which enables parsing without a schema) was first formalized in XML, although it had been implemented successfully in the Electronic Book Technology "Dynatext" software; the software from the University of Waterloo New Oxford English Dictionary Project; the RISP LISP SGML text processor at Uniscope, Tokyo; the US Army Missile Command IADS hypertext system; Mentor Graphics Context; Interleaf and Xerox Publishing System.


Versions


1.0 and 1.1

The first (XML 1.0) was initially defined in 1998. It has undergone minor revisions since then, without being given a new version number, and is currently in its fifth edition, as published on November 26, 2008. It is widely implemented and still recommended for general use. The second (XML 1.1) was initially published on February 4, 2004, the same day as XML 1.0 Third Edition, and is currently in its second edition, as published on August 16, 2006. It contains features (some contentious) that are intended to make XML easier to use in certain cases. The main changes are to enable the use of line-ending characters used on
EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding six- ...
platforms, and the use of scripts and characters absent from Unicode 3.2. XML 1.1 is not very widely implemented and is recommended for use only by those who need its particular features. Prior to its fifth edition release, XML 1.0 differed from XML 1.1 in having stricter requirements for characters available for use in element and attribute names and unique identifiers: in the first four editions of XML 1.0 the characters were exclusively enumerated using a specific version of the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
standard (Unicode 2.0 to Unicode 3.2.) The fifth edition substitutes the mechanism of XML 1.1, which is more future-proof but reduces redundancy. The approach taken in the fifth edition of XML 1.0 and in all editions of XML 1.1 is that only certain characters are forbidden in names, and everything else is allowed to accommodate suitable name characters in future Unicode versions. In the fifth edition, XML names may contain characters in the Balinese,
Cham Cham or CHAM may refer to: Ethnicities and languages *Chams, people in Vietnam and Cambodia **Cham language, the language of the Cham people ***Cham script ***Cham (Unicode block), a block of Unicode characters of the Cham script *Cham Albanian ...
, or Phoenician scripts among many others added to Unicode since Unicode 3.2. Almost any Unicode code point can be used in the character data and attribute values of an XML 1.0 or 1.1 document, even if the character corresponding to the code point is not defined in the current version of Unicode. In character data and attribute values, XML 1.1 allows the use of more
control character In computing and telecommunication, a control Character (computing), character or non-printing character (NPC) is a code point (a number) in a character encoding, character set, that does not represent a written symbol. They are used as in-band ...
s than XML 1.0, but, for "robustness", most of the control characters introduced in XML 1.1 must be expressed as numeric character references (and #x7F through #x9F, which had been allowed in XML 1.0, are in XML 1.1 even required to be expressed as numeric character references). Among the supported control characters in XML 1.1 are two line break codes that must be treated as whitespace characters, which are the only control codes that can be written directly.


2.0

There has been discussion of an XML 2.0, although no organization has announced plans for work on such a project. XML-SW (SW for
skunkworks Skunk Works is an official trademark for the Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs (formerly Lockheed Advanced Development Projects). Skunkworks or Skunk works may also refer to: * ''Skunkworks'' (album), alternative rock album by Bruce ...
), which one of the original developers of XML has written, contains some proposals for what an XML 2.0 might look like, including elimination of DTDs from syntax, as well as integration of
XML namespace XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary. If each vocabulary ...
s,
XML Base XML Base is a World Wide Web Consortium recommended facility for defining base URIs, for resolving relative URIs, in parts of XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstruc ...
and
XML Information Set XML Information Set (XML Infoset) is a W3C specification describing an abstract data model of an XML document in terms of a set of ''information items''. The definitions in the XML Information Set specification are meant to be used in ''other'' sp ...
into the base standard.


Binary XML

The World Wide Web Consortium also has an XML Binary Characterization Working Group doing preliminary research into use cases and properties for a binary encoding of XML Information Set. The working group is not chartered to produce any official standards. Since XML is by definition text-based, ITU-T and ISO are using the name
Fast Infoset Fast Infoset (or FI) is an international standard that specifies a binary encoding format for the XML Information Set (''XML Infoset'') as an alternative to the XML document format. It aims to provide more efficient serialization than the text-b ...
for their own binary format (ITU-T Rec. X.891 and ISO/IEC 24824-1) to avoid confusion.


Criticism

XML and its extensions have regularly been criticized for verbosity, complexity and redundancy. Mapping the basic tree model of XML to
type system In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer progra ...
s of programming languages or databases can be difficult, especially when XML is used for exchanging highly structured data between applications, which was not its primary design goal. However,
XML data binding XML data binding refers to a means of representing information in an XML document as a business object in computer memory. This allows applications to access the data in the XML from the object rather than using the DOM or SAX to retrieve the data ...
systems allow applications to access XML data directly from objects representing a
data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...
of the data in the programming language used, which ensures
type safety In computer science, type safety and type soundness are the extent to which a programming language discourages or prevents type errors. Type safety is sometimes alternatively considered to be a property of facilities of a computer language; that is ...
, rather than using the
DOM Dom or DOM may refer to: People and fictional characters * Dom (given name), including fictional characters * Dom (surname) * Dom La Nena (born 1989), stage name of Brazilian-born cellist, singer and songwriter Dominique Pinto * Dom people, an et ...
or SAX to retrieve data from a direct representation of the XML itself. This is accomplished by automatically creating a mapping between elements of the XML schema
XSD XSD (XML Schema Definition), a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C), specifies how to formally describe the elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document. It can be used by programmers to verify each piece of item con ...
of the document and members of a class to be represented in memory. Other criticisms attempt to refute the claim that XML is a
self-describing In computer programming, self-documenting (or self-describing) source code and user interfaces follow naming conventions and structured programming conventions that enable use of the system without prior specific knowledge. In web development, se ...
language (though the XML specification itself makes no such claim).
JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...
,
YAML YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Exte ...
, and
S-Expressions In computer programming, an S-expression (or symbolic expression, abbreviated as sexpr or sexp) is an expression in a like-named notation for nested list (tree-structured) data. S-expressions were invented for and popularized by the programming la ...
are frequently proposed as simpler alternatives (see
Comparison of data serialization formats This is a comparison of data serialization formats, various ways to convert complex objects to sequences of bits. It does not include markup languages used exclusively as document file format A document file format is a text or binary file form ...
) that focus on representing highly structured data rather than documents, which may contain both highly structured and relatively unstructured content. However, W3C standardized XML schema specifications offer a broader range of structured
XSD XSD (XML Schema Definition), a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C), specifies how to formally describe the elements in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document. It can be used by programmers to verify each piece of item con ...
data types compared to simpler serialization formats and offer modularity and reuse through
XML namespace XML namespaces are used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document. They are defined in a W3C recommendation. An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary. If each vocabulary ...
s.


See also

*
List of XML markup languages This is a list of notable XML markup languages. A * AdsML Markup language used for interchange of data between advertising systems. *aecXML: a mark-up language which uses Industry Foundation Classes to create a vendor-neutral means to access d ...
*
List of XML schemas This is a list of notable XML schemas in use on the Internet sorted by purpose. XML schemas can be used to create XML documents for a wide range of purposes such as syndication, general exchange, and storage of data in a standard format. Bookmar ...
*
Extensible programming Extensible programming is a term used in computer science to describe a style of computer programming that focuses on mechanisms to extend the programming language, compiler and runtime environment. Extensible programming languages, supporting this ...
*
Comparison of data-serialization formats This is a comparison of data serialization file format, formats, various ways to convert complex object (computer science), objects to sequences of bits. It does not include markup languages used exclusively as document file formats. Overview S ...
*
Binary XML Various binary formats have been proposed as compact representations for XML (''Extensible Markup Language''). Using a binary XML format generally reduces the verbosity of XML documents thereby also reducing the cost of parsing, but hinders the use ...
*
EBML Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML) is a generalized file format for any kind of data, aiming to be a binary equivalent to XML. It provides a basic framework for storing data in XML-like tags. It was originally developed for the Matroska audio/ ...
*
WBXML WAP Binary XML (WBXML) is a binary representation of XML. It was developed by the WAP Forum and since 2002 is maintained by the Open Mobile Alliance as a standard to allow XML documents to be transmitted in a compact manner over mobile networks and ...
*
XML Protocol The XML Protocol ("XMLP") is a standard being developed by the W3C XML Protocol Working Group to the following guidelines, outlined in the group's charter: # An envelope for encapsulating XML data to be transferred in an interoperable manner that ...


Notes


References


Further reading

* Annex A of ISO 8879:1986 (SGML) * * * * * *


External links


W3C XML homepage

XML 1.0 Specification


by
Rick Jelliffe Richard (Rick) Alan Jelliffe (born 1960) is an Australian programmer and standards activist (ISO, W3C, IETF), particularly associated with web standards, markup languages, internationalization and schema languages. He is the founder and Chief Tec ...

''XML, Java and the Future of the Web''
(1997) by
Jon Bosak Jon Bosak led the creation of the XML specification at the W3C. From 1996–2008, he worked for Sun Microsystems. XML Tim Bray, who was one of the editors of the XML specification, has this to say in his note on Bosak in his annotated version o ...

http://validator.w3.org/
The Official 3CMarkup Validation Service
The XML FAQ
originally for the W3C's XML SIG by Peter Flynn {{Authority control Application layer protocols Articles with example code Bibliography file formats Computer file formats Data modeling languages Data serialization formats Markup languages Open formats Presentation layer protocols Technical communication World Wide Web Consortium standards