XML (eXtensible Markup Language)Â is a structured text format developed to describe data to be shared by dissimilar systems. XML has become a standard for communications between systems. To make handling XML-formatted data simpler and more error resistant, Business Central provides XMLports, a data import/export object. In addition to processing XML-formatted data, XMLports can also handle a wide variety of other text file formats, including CSV files, generic flat files, and so on. XML-formatted data is text based, with each piece of information structured in one of two basic formats: elements or attributes. An element is the overall logical unit of information, while an attribute is a property of an element. They are formatted as follows:
- <Tag>elementvalue</Tag> (an element format)
- <Tag AttribName="attribute datavalue"> (an attribute format))