17. The system of claim 11 wherein the metadata describes an organization of, the data types of, or constraints on the data from the application.
11. A method comprising: receiving a request to archive data of an application program; extracting the data from the application program from at least one data file; translating, using one or more processors, the data from the application program into a markup language version of the data from the application program; translating, using the one or more processors, metadata from the application into a markup language version of the metadata from the application, wherein the metadata from the application describes the data from the application, and the translating of the metadata from the application comprises determining a type of the markup language being used, and performing the translation of the metadata based on the type of the markup language; and transmitting, to at least one of a backup and restore module and an archive file, the markup language version of the data from the application program, and the markup language version of the metadata.