1. A method for transmitting data formatted in an extensible markup language (XML), comprising: providing a dual-representation format parser for converting between an extensible markup language (XML) representation that is compatible with standard XML and an extensible binary representation that is configured to reduce a number of bits required to represent common data as compared to the XML representation; accessing an XML representation according to a document type definition (DTD), the XML representation including element start tags, element end tags and data values; parsing the XML representation to generate a single data stream binary representation of the XML representation by providing binary data representations for element start tags and data values and by not providing binary data representations for element end tags; wherein the binary data representations are each formed using X-bit bytes; wherein consistent extensible encoding is provided for each binary data representation by using a most-significant-bit of each X-bit byte as a termination indicator bit where a first logic level indicates the byte is a termination byte and a second logic level indicates that more bytes are included in a multi-byte data word; and transmitting the single data stream binary representation to an external system through a network using a communication interface; wherein the element start tags are represented using positive integer binary data representations; and wherein the data values are represented using binary data representations selected from a group comprising a string, an integer, a floating point number, an enumerated value, a pattern, and a packed component.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the network for the transmission comprises a communication channel having a bandwidth of less than or equal to about 9600 baud.