What are XML and CML?
CML (Chemical Markup Language) is a new approach to managing molecular information using recently developed Internet tools such as XML and Java. It is based strictly on SGML, the most robust and widely used system for precise information management in many areas. It has been developed over several years and has been tested in many areas and on a variety of machines. CML is not ‘just another file format’; it is capable of holding extremely complex information structures and so acting as an interchange mechanism or for archival. It interfaces easily with modern database architectures such as relational databases or object-oriented databases. Most importantly, it a large amount of generic XML software to process and transform it is already available from the community.