Over the past decade or so, Extensible Markup Language (XML) has become more widely used than ever before as a means of transferring data between applications and even between organizations. XML provides a standard protocol with which these applications and organizations can communicate. Using XML Schema, a company can define a standard structure for its data that can then be used across multiple departments and organizations. This structured data enables developers to easily create applications that can communicate with each other without much effort.

In addition, most organizations use forms in one way or another, whether to enter a purchase request, submit expense report information, or track weekly status. If you look at a typical form, you will notice that the form itself is structured unlike a typical freeform document created in an application such as Microsoft Office Word 2010. In these freeform documents you can type anything you like in any way that you choose. Although a form may contain sections that allow you to enter freeform text such as comments, most of your typical forms are highly structured. Fields in the form usually require you to enter specific types of data such as sales numbers or costs. Since XML defines a structured data format (which can contain some unstructured elements) and forms are highly structured with bits of freeform data, it makes sense to tie together forms and XML data. Once a user has filled out a form that is connected to XML data, the data can easily be incorporated into back-end processes that understand the structure of the XML data for that form. So, this fits one of the main purposes of XML—tying together multiple processes using a standard protocol.