Most likely data repseneted as XML.
Suppose you have two abstract pieces of data:
name: John Smith
salary: 10000 (whatever it means, curently Computer Science isn't concerned with measurement units too much
)
You can represent your data in many ways, for example in some proprietary format:
name="John Smith", salary="10000" or in "comma separated values" (CSV) format
John Smith,10000 or if you choose XML format
<root>
<name>John Smith</name>
<salary>10000</salary>
</root> now your data are XML encoded.
