XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) helps tag data and organize it into a neat, clean structure that can be understood by both computers and humans.

XML is similar to HTML, but simpler in syntax and more flexible. In HTML, you can only use tags predefined by the technology, while XML allows you to create your own tags and structure information however you want. For example, this is an XML document generated by ispmanager in response to a successful authorization via the API:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <doc ...> <auth id="session number" level="access level">session number</auth> ... </doc>

Here we have defined that the document will have an element <ID> with the session number and an element <Level> with the access level. You can organize any textual information as you like: set any parameters and set their values. XML is used everywhere, it helps:

1. Exchange data between systems such as client-server applications, web services, and mobile applications. XML gives the data structure and makes it understandable to different applications: you can enter a product description in XML in an accounting program and upload it to a marketplace.
2. Store any data in applications: from medical records to a recipe for grandma's signature pie.
3. Write configuration file data. Many applications, including web servers, databases, and development applications, use XML to parameterize and configure their functionality.
4. Create web pages. For example, the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format uses XML to provide news feeds and other web streams. Some documents on our site, such as our license agreement, are also written in XML and converted to HTML. 
5. Prepare data for machine learning. Yes, XML data preparation is an important step in supervised machine learning. Before the data is fed to the AI, it is carefully tagged.