XML has become a standard for storing and exchanging data in the world of computing and internet. For this reason, converting existing data into XML format and generating new data in the form of XML have become routine tasks in many systems. There are many ways in which XML data can be generated. Each method has a different purpose and suits different needs.

Using IDEs to Generate XML

Some IDEs like Eclipse and Stylus Studio can generate sample XML files from XML Schemas. This IDE feature comes handy when one is developing complex XML schemas and need to quickly test them by generating sample files. While this may look quite interesting at first, this rarely helps at the runtime of an application.

Writing Scripts/Programs to Create XML

Many programmers write simple scripts in their favorite scripting or programming language which read data from files or retrieve data from databases and generate XML files. This may or may not involve an XML Schema. XML Schema is often skipped when the structure of the XML is simple.