Web Revolution and Interoperability

The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has a dedicated working groups that are developing and maintaining XML (Extensible Markup Language) & SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).
Their goal is to design a set of technologies fitting in the Web architecture in order to lead Web services to their full potential.
The W3C has come up with common protocols that will ensure interoperability and revolutionalise the Web, hence the XML and SOAP.
XML is a web language that doesn't have a fixed set of tags (unlike HTML). It is straight forward, easy to use and supports many different applications. It can be extended and adapted to meet many different needs. (For further reading, visit http://www.W3.org/TR/REC-XML)
SOAP is an XML-based Web services protocol (messaging framework) intended for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment such as the Web.
Bussiness benefits in that applications are able to communicate with each other to deliver sophisticated added-value services.