XML, specifically, is a set of rules for formatting data. Because this is ALL that XML is, XML is very powerful.

Engineers do not need to agree on how computer programs should be written in order to cooperate using XML. This makes it easier to construct large complex systems with cooperating elements, which you might say is the holy grail of distributed computing. Distributed computing is important because it allows groups of computers to share responsibility for storing, validating, guarding, presenting, and otherwise manipulating data. XML is important because it is flexible enough that engineers are able to agree on it. From a non-engineer's point of view, XML represents a more sophisticated and general form of HTML which is successful for the same reason HTML was: both formats separate the process of specifying information from the communications and display issues for a particular user. XML goes much further by allowing developers to define complex information structures and elaborate manipulations on those structures, without translating out of the standard format. (HTML information needs to be translated to and from some more malleable forma, e.g. SQL or XML, to do anything complicated).

Scrutable Systems uses XML on all internal and client projects. The pages you are reading may be HTML, but they are maintained as XML in repositories with our other documents. Any computer information may be represented as XML, however in some cases (e.g. large binary files used to store rich media with sound and video elements), it is preferable to simply refer to the media data as a resource. The RDF proposal of the W3C attempts to provide a common framework for making these references from XML, but there are other techniques as well.

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