For example, if you have a block of sales data and each item in the block is clearly identified, you can load just the items that you need into a sales report and load other items into an accounting database. When you describe the structure and meaning of your data, you make it possible to reuse that data in any number of ways. In XML the tags define the structure and meaning of your data - what the data is. In HTML, the tags define the look and feel of your data - the headlines go here, the paragraph starts there, and so on. HTML and XML documents contain data that is surrounded with tags, but that is where the similarities between the two languages end.

In the source code for this article, the HTML tags do a variety of jobs, such as define the beginning and end of each paragraph (. Tags in HTML and XML documents are easy to recognize because they are surrounded by angle brackets. If you browse through it (in Microsoft Internet Explorer, right-click the page, and then click View Source), you will see a mix of readable text and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags, such as and. The HTML code for this article is a good example of computer markup at work. In computing, 'mark up' has also evolved into 'markup.' Markup is the process of using codes called tags (or sometimes tokens) to define the structure, the visual appearance, and - in the case of XML - the meaning of any data. If you have ever used the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Office Word, you have used a computerized form of mark up. Marking up a document is how we define the structure, meaning, and visual appearance of the information in the document. They tell students to move paragraphs, clarify sentences, correct misspellings, and so on.

For example, school teachers mark up student papers all of the time. People have created documents for centuries, and for just as long they have marked up those documents. To understand XML, it helps to understand the idea of marking up data. In this articleĪ brief look at mark up, markup, and tagsĪ peek at XML in the Microsoft Office System

But what is XML, exactly? This article explains the basics of XML - what it is and how it works. You may have heard of Extensible Markup Language (XML), and you may have heard many reasons why your organization should use it.

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