Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a formatting standard that uses tags to describe data. Unlike an HTML tag, an XML tag does not tell a browser how to format a piece of data. Instead, an XML tag identifies a piece of data.
For example, suppose you are a bookseller who sells books on the Web. You want to classify each book in your library by the following criteria:
You can create an XML file for each book. The XML file for a book titled Touring Germany's Great Cathedrals would be similar to the following:
<nonfiction>
<Title>Touring Germany's Great Cathedrals</Title>
<Author>Tony Walters</Author>
<Publisher>Douglas Drive Publishing</Publisher>
<PriceUS>$29.99</PriceUS>
<Genre>Travel</Genre>
<Genre>Architecture</Genre>
<Genre>History</Genre>
<Synopsis>This book fully illustrates twelve of Germany's most inspiring cathedrals with full-color photographs, scaled cross-sections, and time lines of their construction.</Synopsis>
<Pages>224</Pages>
</nonfiction>
Similarly, you can classify LabVIEW data by name, value, and type. You can represent a string control for a user name in XML as follows:
<String>
<Name>User Name</Name>
<Value>Reggie Harmon</Value>
</String>