XML is human and machine readable data format, a property that makes it extremely useful for data-serving and data-exchange. It can be used to represent any kind of data, both unstructured document data and highly structured data from a database. This means that XML can describe parts of hierarchically structured documents, and it can also be used to represent data in rows and columns. XML is thus suitable not only for managing what has come to be known as content but also for managing the exchange of almost any kind of data on the Web. XML represents a significant advancement for the business user by putting them in control rather than requiring the specialised expertise of a web designer. This enables users to quickly and easily create applications for publishing dynamic content to multiple types of media. The costs of creating and then re-creating the same content for different purposes may be one of the biggest hidden costs that remain for information-intensive enterprises. Many companies today are just starting to realise the amount of time and money their employees waste while creating and re-purposing content. XML helps solve the problem of 'copy and paste abuse' and other redundant work that is necessary in the typical document publishing life cycle. XML reduces implementation time and costs by putting more control in the hands of business users. Smarty Templates The goal in the use of templates is to facilitate the separation of application code from presentation. Typically, the application code contains the business logic of your application, this code is maintained by programmers. The presentation is the way your content is presented to the end user, which is written and maintained in template files. Template designers maintain the templates. At its most basic function, the application code collects content, assigns it to the template and displays it. The content might be something like the description of a product after a search. In this context the application code finds and displays the content for the product, which will be presented in the template. The template designer is responsible for the presentation. This Smarty Template paradigm has benefits such as: Designers can't break application code. They can amend the templates to meet design criteria, but the code stays intact. Programmers aren't messing with templates. They can go about maintaining the application code, changing the way content is acquired, making new business rules, etc. without disturbing the presentation layer. Templates are a close representation of what the final output will be, which is an intuitive approach. Designers don't care how the content got to the template.