Advantages and Disadvantages of XML

XML is a type of markup language and is used to store and organize data. As you know HTML is also a markup language but it is used to display the data in the webpage.

Advantages of using XML

• XML is very simple, it uses very little syntax and rules while coding.
• It does not require any special tool or software to write code, it can be written through a simple code editor or notepad.
• You can create tags by yourself in it, so there is no need to remember any tag.
• It is both human readable and machine readable.
• It makes data sharing very easy.
• Almost all programming languages like PHP, Java, JavaScript, ASP, Python, .NET, C, C++ support XML.

Disadvantages of using XML

• Tags in XML are user defined i.e. how its coding and structure will be completely dependent on the writer, which may cause trouble for other users to understand it.
• HTML is used to display XML in a web browser. No browser can understand XML directly, it has to be converted to HTML first.
• It does not have data type support.
• It has to rely on HTML for processing.
• It does not have pre-defined syntax, so its code can be redundant, which can affect the efficiency of the application.