There exists many vendors for database solutions, each of them with their own unique medium.  Frequently we have to move data between them or to a desktop application like Excel.  Generally a flat file is done to do this.  The most common is the CSV (Comma seperated values) or tab delimited file.  However, ever increasingly more popular is the XML format.  XML allows for the opportunity to store three dimensional data structures in a flat file. It also provides for a more descriptive nature; for example each data node is at least somewhat self aware of the data it represents.

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