XML
		We can use XML to represent many types of data. XML has largely replaced the .ini or .properties file format for configuration information. The old file formats often consisted of name=value format.  They were often relatively short, and human editable.  Order often did not matter; you could place properties wherever you wanted. XML files are often a better choice than .ini or .properties files.  XML files have much stronger syntax. If a tag is out of place in an XML file, it's easy to find. If a tag is out of place in an .ini file, it may be hard to find, or it may even cause a program to crash. Web Services uses XML extensively, and it relies heavily on auto-generation.  Thus, the programmer never has to create XML by hand, or even read it.  The XML layer is largely invisible.  But, the nature of XML makes it machine independent and human readable if necessary. Java includes tools to read and write XML, and to turn XML into objects.  We'll look at these and compare/contrast differences. SAX DOM JDOM