Extensible Markup Language, XML is a very popular simple text based language to be used as a mode of communication between the applications. It is considered as a standard means to transport and store data. JAVA provides an excellent support and rich set of libraries to parse, modify or inquire XML documents.

XML is an international data standard, a sort of lingua franca for computing. To be formal about it, XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. Practically speaking, XML is a method to structure electronic documents, and its aim is to separate presentation, structure, and meaning from the actual content. It’s been so successful at doing this, it’s now used to represent any kind of data structure (including databases and other business information). XML takes an exceptionally simple approach to structure.

In essence, it simply marks sections of a document with a descriptive label (hence “markup”—and because you’re not limited to a fixed set of labels, it’s “extensible”). Where a machine would find it difficult to read a document, XML has no trouble breaking down the marked sections into something it can use. It works the other way round, as well: while it’s nearly impossible for a human to read the source of some proprietary data format, by contrast, an XML structure is actually intelligible.

At least, it is to a developer – which is why developers find it relatively easy to do something with data they get in XML. Of course, if you’re not a developer, you’ll now be thinking, So what? Well, think of it this way: by marking up a piece of content, XML makes files very easy to understand, move, and translate into other environments. These three reasons alone make XML a no-brainer for the small business that wants to grow, and one that recognizes that electronic information plays a major role in its current and future business endeavors.

This course will teach you basic XML concepts and usage of various types of JAVA based XML parsers in a simple and intuitive way.