Prepare for the Salesforce Admin Certification Exam with comprehensive questions and study guides. Enhance your knowledge and boost your confidence for exam success. Get ready to ace the exam with engaging content and resources!

Each practice test/flash card set has 50 randomly selected questions from a bank of over 500. You'll get a new set of questions each time!

Practice this question and more.


In which format is data exchanged through web services?

  1. JSON

  2. HTML

  3. XML

  4. CSV

The correct answer is: XML

Web services typically exchange data in a structured format that can be easily processed by different systems. One of the most common formats for this purpose is XML (eXtensible Markup Language). XML allows for the representation of complex data structures in a way that is both human-readable and machine-readable, making it an ideal choice for web services to communicate between different applications, especially when they are hosted on different platforms or built using different technologies. XML's ability to define custom tags and structures enables users to create a data format that precisely matches the needs of the application. Additionally, XML is designed to be extensible, meaning that as requirements evolve, new elements and attributes can be added without breaking existing functionality. Although other formats like JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) are also popular in modern web services, especially given their efficiency and ease of use with JavaScript, the traditional context of web services primarily recognizes XML as the foundational format. HTML and CSV do not serve the same purpose as web service data exchange formats; HTML is primarily for web pages and displaying content, while CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a simple file format used for the storage of tabular data. Thus, XML remains a central format in the context of data interchange through web services.