Background 1.1 General XML means eXtensible Markup Language. XML is used to organize the contents of a document or file into elements. It uses tags of the form to begin an element of the document and to mark the end of an element. Elements can be nested in specified ways.
Elements also can have attributes as a part of their construction.
This allows files, documents, and databases to be accessed by other applications, provided they can also access a definition of the tags and their structure. The original published standard for XML include one mechanism for doing that, and others are being developed. HTML also provides for display formatting information, such as fonts, colors, spacing, etc. That information is normally provided separately for processing XML documents. 1.2 Vendor Usage Oracle is committed to using XML in it's future database products.