The trouble is that the statement “100% XML-compliant” refers only to the syntax, not the spirit. It is entirely possible to create closed, proprietary IT systems that are 100% XML based.

Whatever the reason, you're lacking in XML savvy and want to remedy the situation. Well, you're in the right place. In this article, Lamont Adams gives an introduction of XML and its basic syntax.

XML represents such description data, borrowing the markup syntax of HTML to wrap data in "meta data." Using any programming language, even C, a programmer can print formatted XML markup to a file ...

Groovy continues these advances in ease of Java/XML integration. In this blog post, I look at how use of Groovy’s XmlSlurper makes XML parsing refreshingly easy and almost transparent.

XMLFox XML Editor is a nice freewareprogram that greatly simplifies these tasks. For the uninitiated, XML is a distant cousin to HTML, thelanguage used to describe Web pages.