To be useful in world wide information networks, documents must be easily-accessible, portable and flexible. They must also be system- and platform-independent. The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a generalized markup languages that provides these features. However, HTML is limited due to its inability to represent the type of data it displays. SGML solves this problem but is complex. XML is designed as a simplified version of SGML to solve many of the problems Web authors have experienced with HTML.

XML can be used for data representation, storage, modeling, and transportation. XML documents can be easily distributed and displayed on the Web. XML enables portable, nonbrowser functionality.

XML is a metalanguage used to define new markup languages by describing what the data is. You can create a grammar specifically for your application or platform. XML is also extensible, allowing the user to customize and add proprietary elements. Furthermore, the ability to create and use XML documents and languages is easily adopted by Web amateurs; XML documents can be simple and very effective.

XML documents can be easily distributed and displayed on the web. For more detailed overview information on XML, see http://www.w3.org/XML