X12: A standard for electronic communication of business forms. For example, form 810 is an invoice, and 856 is a shipping notice. See also: DISA.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language): An “open”, ISO standard data language, similar to, but more powerful than HTML. It is not only for storing and transmitting data, but also describing what the data mean. It is becoming a popular format for business-to-business transactions on the Web. Two features of it are that, like HTML, it uses tags, and an XML file is tree structured, as illustrated by the following
example:
<line item>
<sku> b40104 </sku>
<quantity> 2 </quantity>
<price>
<currency> euro </currency>
<value> 5.50 </value>
</price>
</line item>
See http://www.w3.org/XML/.