_XML

_{Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C standard for creating custom markup language to representing structured data in text.}

_{Characteristics of XML}

• Simple and Plain Text
  • Easy to read and understand both for humans and computers
  • Supports "all" platforms and programming languages
  • Supports multi-lingual documents
• Self-description
  • Meta data in the form of tags and attributes
  • Simplifies tools/programs development
• Open
  • Widely adopted World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard since 1998
• Extensibility
  • No fixed set of tags. New tags can be created as they are needed.
  • Can express complex messages.

_{Sample XML}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Bio>
     <Name>
        <First> John </First>
        <Last> Smith </Last>
     </Name>
     <Company current="Yes">
         Acme Open Source Software Center
     </Company>
</Bio>

_{Useful Links}

• XML Security Features in Netscaler 9.0
• XML Specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML