XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It provides a standardized framework for defining custom tags to store and transmit structured data and documents.
Key Characteristics of XML
- Extensible: Unlike HTML, XML has no predefined tags. Authors create their own tags tailored to their specific problem domain (e.g.
<book>,<price>). - Self-Describing: The tag names reflect the meaning of the enclosed data.
- Strict Well-Formedness: XML parsers stop immediately upon encountering a syntax error, preventing ambiguous parsing.