Comparison of CSV format versus XML format:
CSV | XML |
Comma Seperated Values | Extensible Markup Language |
Flat Table Structure | Hierarchical Tree Structure |
All rows has the same columns | Flexible list of fields within each node |
Language dependency for delimiters, date and number format | No language dependency for delimiters, date and number format |
Difficult implementation of format checks | Easy implementation of format checks |
Easy to use for humans | Easy to be used by IT systems |
Designed for manual data entry | Designed for automated generation |