1. Introduction
XML has taken the front page recently. It has been heralded as "the new language for the Web", "a replacement HTML", "the new information management paradigm", and other lofty things. With all of the hype, it is difficult to understand exactly what XML is, and how it might be appropriate for you.
The paper compares XML to its parent, SGML, its cousin, HTML, and a page-oriented standard, PDF.