XML

XML, or Extensible Markup Language, is a language designed to store and transport data without being dependent on a particular software or hardware. Unlike HTML which displays data and focuses on how data looks, XML works as a tool to transfer data and emphasizes on what the data is. XML data is known as self-describing or self-defining, as it has the ability to define and describe the structure and data types itself. It uses tags just like HTML, but the tags in XML are not predefined; it allows the author to define his/her own tags and document structure. XML also supports Unicode, allowing almost any information in any human language to be communicated. It adheres to a strict syntax and is both human-readable and machine-readable, making it a widely used standard in web and server-side development.