XML File

XML (extensible markup language ) files are intended to be readable by humans and machines. They are a particularly useful file format when there is extensive metadata. This file format is only useful when in a standard format.

Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<data-set xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
      <record>
            <Age>3</Age>
            <Gender>1</Gender>
      </record>
      <record>
            <Age>3</Age>
            <Gender>2</Gender>
      </record>
      <record>
            <Age>1</Age>
            <Gender>2</Gender>
      </record>
      <record>
            <Age>4</Age>
            <Gender>2</Gender>
   </record>
</data-set>

XML can store substantial metadata

XML files are a mixture of tags (e.g., <record> and text (e.g., 4). This gives the file format a large amount of flexibility for storing metadata, as any metadata that needs to be stored can be stored by creating new tags.

XML files are not guaranteed to contain relevant metadata

Although XML files can contain substantial metadata, it is not guaranteed that they will contain substantial metadata. This is evident in the example above, where there is no explanation as to what the 3 for Age represents.

XML files are only useful when in a standard format

Although XML files are very flexible, this flexibility is only useful if the software that needs to read the file understands the specific variant. Having a file that is known to be an XML file is no guarantee that the data can be read.