One Ofof XML Datadata Bindingbinding's Strengthsstrengths Isis Thethe Abilityability Toto [[serialization|un/serialize]] Objectsobjects Acrossacross Programsprograms, languages, and platforms. You can dump a time series of structured objects from a datalogger written in C on an embedded processor, bring it across the network to process in perl and finally visualize in [[Mathematica]]. The structure and the data remain consistent and coherent throughout the journey, and no custom formats or parsing is required. This is not unique to XML. [[YAML]], for example, is emerging as a powerful data binding alternative to XML. [[JSON]] (which can be regarded as a subset of YAML) is often suitable for lightweight or restricted applications.
