The Ecma General Assembly has unanimously approved ECMAScript for XML (E4X) as an international standard (ECMA-357) on 0th July 2004.
E4X is a vendor-neutral set of programming language extensions adding native XML support to ECMAScript (ECMA-262, or ISO/IEC 16262), one of the most widely used programming languages.

E4X provides a simple, familiar, XML programming model that flattens the XML learning curve by leveraging the existing skills and knowledge of one of the largest developer communities worldwide. It reuses familiar programming language concepts, operators and syntax for manipulating XML data, meaning software developers can start creating, navigating and manipulating XML with little to no additional knowledge. E4X reduces code complexity, time to market and revision cycles; decreases XML footprint requirements; and enables looser coupling between code and external data.