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XML: Data the Way You Want It Introduction The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is defining a new standard for data formats called Extensible Markup Language (XML). If youve been around the Web very long, you know that HTML is pretty good at displaying Webcontent, but pretty bad at describing Webcontent as data so that it can be successfully manipulated over the Internet. Fortunately, that is what XML is all about—providing a standard for defining your own markup tags and data structure so that data can be easily exchanged online. XML provides the ability to augment HTML text with XML tags to make smarter Web pages and intranets. The XML tags let the browser know about the information that its presenting, which enables all kinds of new capabilities: Imagine a Web where you can do real searches and not spend an hour sorting through 10,000 unrelated hits such as Big Tall and Portly North Pole Fashions on a search for pet shampoos. XML gives search engines the ability to discriminate between Bill (as in Gates) from bill (as in those annoying reminders that you owe somebody money). Imagine planning an evening on the town, using your laptop to integrate the address of a restaurant in your favorite online city guide into the traffic map application that tells you how to get there. XML lets people define data formats that can be seamlessly shared between unaffiliated applications. Imagine universal export and import formats supported by all your favorite applications. With this capability, a pizza delivery service could present their wares in a format that all client-side ordering software could understand? All sorts of things become possible with a universal standard for describing data. Since co-founding the XML Working Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) over a year ago, Microsoft has been actively involved in advancing XML through draft specifications to a final recommended specification. And, just as Microsofts Dynamic HTML offers fully compliant implem