XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages.[1] It is classified as an extensible language, because it allows the user to define the mark-up elements. XML's purpose is to aid information systems in sharing structured data, especially via the Internet, [2] to encode documents, and to serialize data; in the last context, it compares with text-based serialization languages such as JSON, YAML and S-Expressions. [3]
XML's set of tools helps developers in creating web pages but its usefulness goes well beyond that. XML, in combination with other standards, makes it possible to define the content of a document separately from its formatting, making it easy to reuse that content in other applications or for other presentation environments. Most importantly, XML provides a basic syntax that can be used to share information between different kinds of computers, different applications, and different organizations without needing to pass through many layers of conversion.[4] [5]
XML began as a simplified subset of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), meant to be readable by people via semantic constraints; application languages can be implemented in XML. These include XHTML,[6] RSS, MathML, GraphML, Scalable Vector Graphics, MusicXML, and others. Moreover, XML is sometimes used as the specification language for such application languages.
XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is a fee-free open standard. The recommendation specifies lexical grammar and parsing requirements.