The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is the universal format for structured documents and data on the Web.

XML lets you make documents smarter, more portable, and more powerful -- that's the promise of XML and that's what all the fuss is about.

XML allows you to use your own tags to define parts of a document. You can do this because XML is a descriptive, not a procedural, language. That is, XML describes what something is rather than performing an action.

XML documents can be moved to any format on any platform -- without the elements losing their meaning. That means you can publish the same information to a web browser, a PDA, or a network-enabled bread machine and each device would use the information appropriately.

XML is a simplified version of SGML and a cousin of HTML. It was developed by members of the W3C and released as a recommendation by the W3C in February 1998.