Editing XML (section)

== Criticism ==
XML and its extensions have regularly been criticized for verbosity, complexity and redundancy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/xml-the-angle-bracket-tax.html|title=XML: The Angle Bracket Tax|website=Codinghorror.com|date=11 May 2008|access-date=16 November 2017|archive-date=26 February 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140226163227/http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/05/xml-the-angle-bracket-tax.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Mapping the basic tree model of XML to [[type system]]s of programming languages or databases can be difficult, especially when XML is used for exchanging highly structured data between applications, which was not its primary design goal. However, [[XML data binding]] systems allow applications to access XML data directly from objects representing a [[data structure]] of the data in the programming language used, which ensures [[type safety]], rather than using the [[Document Object Model|DOM]] or [[Simple API for XML|SAX]] to retrieve data from a direct representation of the XML itself. This is accomplished by automatically creating a mapping between elements of the XML schema [[XSD]] of the document and members of a class to be represented in memory.

Other criticisms attempt to refute the claim that XML is a [[self-describing]] language<ref>{{cite web|url=http://workflow.healthbase.info/monographs/XML_myths_Browne.pdf|title=The Myth of Self-Describing XML|date=September 2003|website=Workflow.HealthBase.info|access-date=16 November 2017}}</ref> (though the XML specification itself makes no such claim).

[[JSON]], [[YAML]], and [[S-expression|S-Expressions]] are frequently proposed as simpler alternatives (see [[Comparison of data-serialization formats]])<ref>{{cite web|url=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51492/what-usable-alternatives-to-xml-syntax-do-you-know|title=What usable alternatives to XML syntax do you know?|website=StackOverflow.com|access-date=16 November 2017}}</ref> that focus on representing highly structured data rather than documents, which may contain both highly structured and relatively unstructured content. However, W3C-standardized XML schema specifications offer a broader range of structured [[XSD]] data types compared to simpler serialization formats and offer modularity and reuse through [[XML namespace]]s.