Special Edition Using Java™ 2 Enterprise Edition

What XML Is and Isn't

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) represents an important step in data representation. In the past, programs used many different formats for storing data. There have been text files with comma-delimited or pipe-delimited fields, binary files in any number of formats, and even plain ASCII text. Unfortunately, most programs use slightly different ways to store data, even if the overall format is similar. Unfortunately, you don't usually have an easy way to describe the format of the data. XML not only gives you a common way to store data, it also gives you a common way to describe the data.

Another problem you encounter when storing data is that most representations tend to be tabular in nature. That is, when you write ...