XML is a standard for storing and transporting data. It allows data to be self-describing and easy to exchange between systems. XML documents must be well-formed, following rules like having matching tags and attributes in quotes. XML uses elements to represent data and attributes to represent metadata. Namespaces allow distinguishing between identically named elements from different domains. XML is processed by parsers like SAX, DOM, and StAX. XSLT uses XPath to transform XML documents into other formats like HTML.