xml, yes or no?

[Littlened]

I may have posted this in the wrong forum, if so, sorry.

At the moment, if I need a page to access a database I build a page with the HTML code it it, and have an include file to include the php code to pull the required data from MYSQL. The HTML file has point in it so the page knows where to put each bit of data.

I've bee reading about XML, and how CMS's are now pulling data from MYSQL, converting it to XML and using the XML to format the page.

Are there any advantages of doing it this way? I know XML is greate because data can be used universally across different systems, but I can't see how this benefit applies here.

Thanks

[DanInManchester]

I'm not sure it would be xml, possibly xhtml which is a stricter version of html that conforms to xml standards.

The only way you really use xml is with an xml stylesheet (xsl). Most recent browsers will read xml file with xsl and display them as a web page. This is fairly common with rss xml feeds so they can be rad without an RSS reader.

Another use of xml is in web services which can be used to expose business data and services across the internet using an open standard. I have used this in cms systems where I want the data to be available to other sites and services.

maybe if you could point to where you have read this I could understand the context of this.