What is the full form of XML?

Full form of XML: Here, we are going to learn about the XML, full form of XML, overview, objective, history, advantages and disadvantages. By Anushree Goswami Last updated : March 26, 2024

XML: Extensible Markup Language

XML is an abbreviation of Extensible Markup Language. It is a markup language and also a platform-independent language that was created and designed to transfer, transact and accumulate data in a particular format that can be operated by a series of operations through the intelligence of humans and machines. To encode documents in that particular format, it states the order of instructions.

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Objective of XML

The chief objectives of XML's design are,

Simplicity
Generality
Usability

History of XML

In 1998, on the 10th of Feb, XML was launched in the late 90's and became a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium. Approximately 150 members Interest Group supported the working group of eleven members who compiled the XML.

In 1997, the 4rth of December, Michael Sperberg-McQueen compiled a list of accounts of design decisions and their set of logical reasons. The empty-element <empty /> syntax and the name "XML" were remarkably contributed by James Clark who worked as Technical Lead of the Working Group. The design was achieved using an amalgamation of email and weekly teleconferences, which created a never meeting situation for an XML working group. In 1996, between August and November, the significant decisions of the design were reached in a short break of extreme work, when the first Working Draft of the XML specification was prepared and issued. Additionally, through 1997, design work continued, and in 1998 on February 10, XML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium Recommendation.

Advantages of XML

XML is platform-independent and programming language independent, therefore on any system; it can be used and supports the change in technology, whenever that occurs.
Unicode is supported by XML, which is an international encoding standard use with different languages and scripts. This specification enables XML to transact any information which is written in any human language.
XML using DTD and Schema enables validation. This validation confirms that the XML document is free from any syntax error.
XML between numerous systems makes data sharing easier because of its platform-independent essence. When there is a transaction happening between different systems, XML data doesn't need any transformation.

Disadvantages of XML

In comparison to other text-based data transmission formats such as JSON, XML syntax is garrulous and superfluous.
When the volume of data is huge, the state of being not useful in the syntax of XML causes excessive collection of storage and transportation costs.
In comparison to other text-based data transmission formats such as JSON, an XML document is less legible.
Array doesn't support by XML.