1----Can any body tell me that what is XML & where does XML is use. If u want to start learning XML then which the better source for learning Any URL to learn it. 2----Does XML needs any preior knowledge to start learning? 3----Basically what is the difference between HTML & XML ? Why XML is use in programming language like Java,vb.net,ASP Thanks

apple, XML is a much more robust form or HTML which allows you to create your own options. Just do a search on "XML faq" and you'll find some good links. ciao, wired

Are you familiar with tomcat and netbeans? Nearly all their configuration files are xml.

HTML is a simplified, static version of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). SGML is large, complicated, and very impractical for the tasks HTML requires. You can't use notepad for HTML and nothing as friendly as Dreamweaver or Frontpage. However, SGML allows document formats which can be so precise and definitive as to allow programs to use them reliably. But, there is a lot of overhead in SGML. HTML was decent as far as it goes, but it was not intended to be used by a program reliably. It was intended to make webpages as a simple default formating code. HTML specifically is not up to the task of sending messages back and forth between programs over a network. It is ambiguous from a programming standpoint, and it is hard to reliably get data from ambiguous files. The overhead alone of being able to parse an HTML document reliably is heavy. So XML was made from SGML, just like HTML was. This time, however, the designers had intentions of making XML a simpified version of SGML. Their concept was to take all the unnecessary details from SGML (you can't imagine all the options to defining a document there are) and combine them in a document type that programs could interpret in necessary ways (example: make their own tags and give precise meanings to them). XML is not really simple, but it is designed to allow programmers and designers to make their own simple document structure, rather than stick to HTML's tag library, for example. This comes into play for programmers. Programmers may have two computers trying to share information over the Internet. What format should the information be in? Well, the project calls for a new type of format with specific requirements. It needs to handle these documents flawlessly and consistently. These documents need to be picked apart by various programs - some the data will go into databases, some of it into email alerts, and some into web pages. All this needs to be automated. XML can be used in such a project. With HTML, you need to strip out the HTML first thing, because it's almost worthless outside of a browser.