A lot has been written, said, and discussed about the Extensible Markup Language (XML). As a result, there is a lot of confusion and chaos regarding exactly what XML means. Is it a language, document, modeling tool, e-Business application, or none of the above? What exactly does XML have to offer? Why does it matter? Furthermore, what does XML bring to the table that other languages, documents, tools, and applications have not been able to do in myriad other ways?