This book quickly introduces the XML standards (including schemas, XPath, and XML transforms), and the philosophy of XML. It then shows how the XML technology embedded into Office 2003 can be used to share and transform data in an enterprise. This book is aimed at experienced Office users that want to use XML to unlock the data in Office spreadsheets and documents. A secondary audience is IT professionals seeking to learn about XML and how it is implemented in Office 2003.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere. For example, computer makers might agree on a standard or common way to describe the information about a computer product (processor speed, memory size, and so forth) and then describe the product information format with XML.