Chapter 1 The XMLSPY Game IN THIS CHAPTER u Understanding XML and XML Schemas u Examining XML in the industry u Looking at the Software Development Lifecycle Model u Finding out how to obtain XMLSPY 5 and how to install it THE  ABILITY  TO  WORK  WITH  XML TECHNOLOGIES  is an important requirement for programmers, Web developers, and database administrators today. Because of the explosive growth of many different (yet interrelated) XML technologies employed across so many different software application platforms, however, it is a challenge to become well-versed enough to design and program XML-based applications. This hands-on book is about accelerating the XML learning curve and enabling you to become technically proficient at actually editing and working with all kinds of   XML   documents   with   the   help   of   XMLSPY  a   powerful   XML   Integrated Development Environment (IDE) used by a community of over one million develop- ers world-wide. In this chapter, I present an overview of the key XML technologies, how they are used in industry today, and I tell you how to install and get started using XMLSPY 5. If you are already familiar with XML technologies and know how to obtain and install XMLSPY, you might want to jump to Chapter 2, which covers XML editing with XMLSPY 5. Got XML? XML (Extensible Markup Language) in its broadest form can be regarded as a uni- versal language for describing structured information. Structured information  can be  anything  that  contains  both  content  (words,  images,  tables,  and  so  on)  and markup, which is the additional information that describes the content and gives it a definite meaning (table header, quantity, price, and so on). XML defines a stan- dard syntax for describing a documents content through the use of markup tags, as shown in the following code snippet: 1