XML is a markup language like HTML that was designed to store and transport data. Unlike HTML which has predefined tags, XML allows authors to define their own tags. XML focuses on describing what the data is, while HTML focuses on how data looks when displayed. A sample XML document is provided that defines a bookstore with multiple books, each with attributes like title, author, year, and price. Several popular scripting languages are also discussed like Bash, Node.js, Ruby, Python, and Perl. Scripting languages are interpreted rather than compiled and make it easier to integrate with other languages and add functionality to applications.