Oracle Database 10g XML & SQL: Design, Build, & Manage XML Applications in Java, C, C++, & PL/SQL

CHAPTER 1Introducing XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a meta-markup language, meaning that the language, as specified by the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) XML 1.0 specification, enables users to define their own markup languages to describe and encapsulate data into XML files. These files can then be transformed into HTML (as well as into any other markup language) and displayed within browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, exchanged across the Internet between applications and businesses, or stored in and retrieved from databases. The power of XML comes from its simplicity, its being part of an open standard, and the incorporation of user-defined markup tags that lend semantics to the embedded data.