The Microsoft® BizTalk™ Framework is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) framework for application integration and electronic commerce. It includes a design framework for implementing an XML schema and a set of XML tags used in messages sent between applications. Microsoft Corp., other software companies and industry standards bodies will use the BizTalk Framework to produce XML schemas in a consistent manner. The BizTalk Framework itself is not a standard. XML is the standard. The goal of the BizTalk Framework is to accelerate the rapid adoption of XML.